Imad al-Saddiq charged in a Syrian newspaper interview Wednesday that "the French authorities helped facilitate the disappearance of Mohammed Zuheir al-Saddiq with the aim of his being liquidated by another party or they liquidated him themselves."

Mohammed Zuheir al-Saddiq was quoted in newspaper reports in 2006 as saying that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his then Lebanese counterpart, Emile Lahoud, ordered Hariri's 2005 assassination in a massive Beirut car bombing.

Saddiq, who was under an international arrest warrant requested by a Lebanese prosecutor, was detained in October 2005 in a Paris suburb in connection with the assassination.

But France refused to extradite him to Lebanon because it had not been given guarantees that he would not face the death penalty if convicted, and the former intelligence agent had since been living in the Paris suburb of Chatou.

But French officials said this week he had disappeared a month ago and they did not know where he was.

A caller to a Kuweiti newsaper who said he was Saddiq said Thursday that he had gone into hiding somewhere in Europe after he suffered three assassination attempts.

But he said he would go to an international tribunal on Hariri's death as soon as it opened.

A UN probe has implicated senior Syrian officials in the car bomb attack that killed Hariri, an opponent of Syria's influence on Lebanon, and 22 other people on February 14, 2005.

Syria, which for three decades was the power broker in its smaller neighbour, has vehemently denied any connection with Hariri's death. -Agencies