Former Syrian vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam, a fierce critic of President Bashar al-Assad, told a German magazine he was forming a government in exile and believed Assad would be forced from power this year.
Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, told the weekly Der Spiegel on Saturday that Assad was facing growing pressure from economic problems at home and the international investigation into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. "His fall has already begun. I don't think his regime will last out this year," Khaddam, who accuses Assad of ordering Hariri's murder, said. The former vice president, for 30 years a confidant of Assad's late father, Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad, left the government in June. |