DAMASCUS - Syria's ruling Baath Party has expelled former Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam, the official news agency SANA said on Sunday, two days after he publicly broke with President Bashar al-Assad.

The party's Arab Nationalist Command said in a statement Khaddam was a traitor to his party, homeland and the Arab nation, SANA reported.

The decision came a day after parliament recommended that Khaddam be tried for high treason after he claimed Assad had threatened former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri months before his Feb. 14, 2005, assassination.

Khaddam, a one-time stalwart of the Baath Party, made the claim Friday in a television interview from Paris, citing corruption within the regime and its failure to reform. He quoted the Syrian president as telling Hariri, months before he was killed: "You want to bring a (new) president in Lebanon. ... I will not allow that. I will crush whoever attempts to overturn our decision."

"No Syrian security service can reach a decision independently, besides the president. Bashar told me that people in Syria were involved [in the assassination] and that means that he was involved," Khaddam said in the interview with Al-Arabiya, the pan-Arab satellite broadcaster, his first since he left Syria several months ago.

Syrian media, which are tightly controlled by the state, did not repeat the quote on Saturday but carried rebuttals, as it is known that many Syrians watch Al-Arabiya.

Syrian state TV broadcast a report from its correspondent in Paris, where Khaddam gave the interview as he has been living there for several months.

"It seems Mr. Khaddam has submitted his credentials to join the well-known list of false witnesses against Syria," the unidentified correspondent said.

In the Syrian parliament, which is dominated by government supporters, numerous legislators called Khaddam a traitor. "I demand that Khaddam stand trial for conspiracy against the motherland," shouted one legislator, Suad Bakkour.

Switchboard choked

Speaker Mahmoud Al-Abrash told the assembly that the parliament's switchboard had been choked by calls from citizens who wanted Khaddam to be prosecuted for treason.

In the interview Friday, Khaddam had said that Syria knew Hariri was working against Syria in Lebanon, which enraged President Assad. "Hariri was subjected to many threats from Syria. ... Dangerous things were said. Once he was summoned to Damascus ... and spoken to in extremely harsh words by President Bashar Assad," he said. After this warning from Assad, Hariri left with "high blood pressure and his nose bleeding."

Former Mossad chief and Labor MK Dan Yatom said Saturday that Khaddam's statements gave a tremendous push to the collapse of the Alawi regime in Syria.

Hariri was assassinated on February 14, 2005 in a massive truck bombing that killed 20 others on a Beirut street.

A UN probe into Hariri's killing has implicated Syria, but Damascus has denied the allegations. Khaddam became a Syrian vice president in 1984. He was the nominal leader in Syria for a short period after Assad's father, Hafez Assad, died in June 2000.

In the interview, Khaddam was bitterly critical of the current Assad government, saying the ruling Baath Party and other popular organizations had been reduced to vindicating "decisions made by the president."

He claimed to have left his homeland on good terms with Assad. "There are differences in opinions, but there was mutual respect," he said, adding that his family was with him in Paris where he was writing a memoir.

Nevertheless, he charged, the Syrian leadership had made many mistakes.

Syria had dictated an extension of the presidential term of pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, which Hariri opposed. The move provoked a political crisis in Syria's tiny Mediterranean neighbor.

Khaddam's comments reflected serious cracks within the Damascus regime. His claim was in direct contradiction to those of Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa, who claimed at a Wednesday news conference that Hariri lied when he told Lebanese politicians he had been threatened by Assad during a meeting on Aug. 26, 2004.

Several anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians told the UN commission they had been told Assad threatened to "break Lebanon" over Hariri's head if he did not support Damascus' decision to extend the Lahoud presidency.

Khaddam also launched a scathing attack against Syria's intelligence chief in Lebanon, Brig. Gen. Rustom Ghazale, as a corrupt officer who insulted Lebanese politicians, including Hariri, on a number of occasions.

Khaddam said Ghazale had urged Assad to bring Hariri to Damascus and "chop off his head because he had created this situation in Lebanon."

Ghazale is one of several Syrian security officials interrogated by UN investigators. (Agencies)