BEIRUT - A Lebanese minister warned Sunday that Damascus could take reprisals in Lebanon after explosive comments by a former top Syrian official implicating the regime in the murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri.

"Calls (to destabilise Lebanon) have become more brutal because the testimony of a member of the regime has confirmed exactly what we told the UN investigators (about the Hariri murder)," said Communications Minister Marwan Hamadeh.

In a dramatic television interview on Friday, former Syrian vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam implicated the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in the February bomb blast that killed Hariri and said Assad himself had threatened the billionaire five-time prime minister.

Hamadeh, in an intervew with US-funded Arabic television station Alhurra, accused Syria of seeking to stoke tensions by trying to provoke a conflict with Israel with the firing of rockets from south Lebanon and to topple the government through a boycott by pro-Damascus Shiite ministers.

Hamadeh, a leading light in the anti-Syrian movement in Lebanon, was himself the target of an attack in October that left him slightly wounded and killed his bodyguard.

Tensions have been growing between Lebanon and its former powerbroker Syria, which has been implicated by a UN probe in the murder of Hariri and has been blamed by many in Lebanon for a string of attacks against Damascus critics.

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