GENEVA - A top Syrian opposition activist said on Thursday that the death of Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan could be the beginning of change in President Bashar al-Assad's powerful inner circle.

Aktham Naise, head of the Syrian Committee for the Defence of Democratic Liberties and Human Rights, also said he expected a U.N. probe to find senior Syrian officials were involved in the killing of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.

Kanaan, Syria's top official in Lebanon for two decades until 2002, committed suicide in his office on Wednesday, officials said, three weeks after he was questioned by a U.N. team led by Detlev Mehlis which is probing Hariri's death.

"Kanaan's death is positive, it is the beginning of a change in Syria. That is the political explanation of the suicide," Naise told Reuters in an interview in Geneva after receiving a prestigious international human rights prize.

Syria, where Assad came to power following the death of his father Hafez in 2000, is ruled by a "small, strong circle", according to Naise, 53, who has been jailed six times.

"Kanaan was one of its pillars. Now that this element has been eliminated, others will follow, either through the Mehlis report or the President will be forced to sideline them to save his own head," he added.

Many bad things

Mehlis, a veteran German prosecutor, discussed the investigation with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Geneva last week. Mehlis is due to present his report to the Security Council by Oct 25.

Shortly before news of Kanaan's death broke, al-Assad told CNN that Syria was not involved in Hariri's death and that he could never have ordered it.

Naise, referring to Kanaan, said: "Even if he wasn't implicated in the assassination of Hariri, he was responsible for intelligence in Lebanon and for many bad things perpetrated in Lebanon."

"I am convinced that others will be implicated in the Mehlis report and they should also be punished for their crimes against the Syrian people," Kanaan said.

"They should be removed from office immediately to ensure the future of the Syrian people and pave the way for democratic change. It is imperative to get rid of this little circle which is running Syria in an arbitrary way," he added.

On Wednesday, Naise collected an international human rights prize given annually by the Swiss-based Martin Ennals Foundation.

The prize, announced last January, is named after the first secretary of the London-based group Amnesty International. Previous laureates include leading Chinese dissident Harry Wu.

Naise spent five months in jail last year for publishing a report on human rights in Syria and urging an end to 40 years of emergency rule that has stifled political life in the country.

He was released from jail on bail in August 2004. Charges of tarnishing the country's image were dropped in June.  (Reuters)