BEIRUT, Lebanon, October 4 (Lebanonwire) -- Al Siyassah online daily claims it has information that the Syrian Baa’th Party leadership is living in fear of an uncertain future with expected changes at the presidential level, leaving the ruling regime teetering on the edge of a power struggle.

The daily’s sources indicated that former Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam is raising concerns back home that he is planning a coup from abroad and is currently being courted by the Syrian regime to come back to the country, fearing he would divulge to French President Jacques Chirac sensitive information about Rafik Hariri’s killers and the details of the circumstances surrounding the murder.

The sources said Khaddam knows who killed former Premier Rafik Hariri and that the Syrian leadership realizes that the UN investigative team led my Detlev Mehlis will implicate it in the Hariri murder. They also report that Chirac advised Khaddam not to return to Syria for fear the regime will withhold his passport and restrict his travels, noting that the former VP has had meetings with Saad Hariri in Paris, who was also advised by Chirac not to return to Lebanon before 2006.

The daily said that when Khaddam is asked about the reasons behind his stay in Paris he replies: “I advised (Syrian President) Bashar Assad not to extend (Lebanese President) Emile Lahoud’s mandate, nor to kill Hariri, but he never listened and did what he wished anyway.”

Plans are being hatched between Hariri and Khaddam to enable the latter to become the next Syrian President in a transition period during which political reforms are undertaken, and a new constitutions is written, where a pluralistic democratic system guarantees general freedoms and puts the power back in the hands of the peopl, the sources claimed.

The sources said the scenario has given birth to an inheritance struggle between former Syrian President Hafez Assad’s children, namely Bashar, Maher and Bushra as well as concerns to officials such as Interior Minister Ghazi Kenaan and former Intelligence head in Lebanon Rustom Ghazaleh, who began registering their assets outside the country.

The sources indicated that the Chairman of Al Madina Bank Ibrahim Abu Ayash has filed a lawsuit against Ghazaleh, accusing him of illegally siphoning $200 million worth of funds using counterfeiting methods assisted by Rana Qoleilat, a bank employee.

Judge Nazem Khoury, who in charge of the Al Madina money Laundering probe, last Sunday escaped an assassination attempt. The sources said that the bank probe has revealed a number of scandals involving a number of Lebanese politicians and journalists who were on the payroll, receiving cash and property worth millions for their support to the Syrian regime.

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