BEIRUT, Lebanon - Syria's former vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam dealt a fresh blow to Syria Saturday after his dramatic revelations that President Bashar al-Assad threatened former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri just months before his murder.

One Lebanese politician described his comments as a "political earthquake" but a pro-Syrian newspaper branded Khaddam a "Judas".

Khaddam, long the architect of Syria's military and political domination of neighbouring Lebanon, made his shock claims in wide-ranging interview with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.

"I will destroy anyone who tries to hinder our decisions," Khaddam quoted Assad as telling Hariri during a meeting in Damascus.

Khaddam, speaking from Paris, said the meeting took place a few months before the February 14 assassination of Hariri in a Beirut bomb blast for which a UN probe has implicated Syrian intelligence.

"We must await the results of the investigation, but no Syrian security service could take such a decision unilaterally," Khaddam said.

The murder of Hariri, a billionaire businessman and five-time prime minister, plunged Lebanon into political turmoil and heightened international pressure on Syria to end its 29-year military presence in its smaller neighbour.

"Khaddam unveils the secrets of Hariri's assassination," Lebanon's top-selling liberal newspaper An-Nahar wrote. "Will he be the key witness in the UN probe?"

"The battle of Damascus, the battle of the regime has begun," predicted a Lebanese MP from the anti-Syrian majority who asked not to be named.

A Syrian analyst who requested anonymity questioned "the timing of Khaddam's declaration, which comes as pressure on Syria has begun to diminish and as a new chief was named to head" the UN probe.

The pro-Damascus paper Ad-Diyar charged: "Syria's Judas has pocketed 30 million dollars, firing off accusations and becoming ... an informer for (outgoing UN probe chief) Detlev Mehlis."

Syrian MP George Jabbour described Khaddam's charges as "delicate and dangerous" and added in an interview with Al-Arabiya that "Khaddam must not forget he was a part of the government. He played an important role in the country's foreign policy."

Khaddam said he had advised Hariri "to leave Lebanon because his situation regarding Syria had become complicated" in the wake of the threat.

"But, of course, at no time did it occur to me that Syria could assassinate Hariri," Khaddam said.

In late March, Syria denied a report from a UN fact-finding mission that Assad had threatened both Hariri and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt if they opposed the policies of Damascus.

Mehlis said in an interview with an Arab newspaper in mid-December that he was convinced that Syria was responsible for the murder.

Khaddam also pointed a finger of blame for tensions in Lebanon before the Hariri murder at Rustom Ghazaleh, Syria's military intelligence chief and vice consul in Lebanon before its troop withdrawal.

"Rustom Ghazaleh behaved as if he had absolute power" in Lebanon, said the former vice president, adding that he had failed to convince Assad to have him replaced.

In an interview with CNN in October, Assad vehemently rejected any notion he had played a personal role in the Hariri assassination.

Assad, whose country has repeatedly denied any involvement in the murder, said he had only found out about Hariri's assassination "from the news ... in my office" and that any Syrian found guilty should be punished.

In the Al-Arabiya interview, Khaddam, 73, also announced the reasons for his resignation in June and his break with the regime.

He said he was "convinced that the process of development and reforms, be they political, economic or administrative, will not succeed" and preferred to choose "the motherland" over "the regime".

"I have many things to say, serious things, when the time is right," he said, adding however that his relationship with Assad remained "amicable".

The vice president first asked to resign at a congress of Syria's ruling Baath party in June.

At the time, he criticised Syrian foreign policy leading up to the withdrawal from Lebanon.

Khaddam, who long served Bashar's father Hafez before his death in 2000, was also close to former interior minister Ghazi Kanaan, for 20 years Syria's intelligence chief in Lebanon, who committed suicide in October.

Lebanese media speculated at the time that Kanaan, who held the post before being replaced by Ghazaleh, had been killed because he was about to spill the beans on Hariri's murder.

Kanaan and Khaddam were reportedly stripped of responsibility for the Lebanon file by Assad, in keeping with an agreement with pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud who accused the two men of being in Hariri's pay.

Khaddam has dual Saudi nationality, and was reportedly helped to obtain it by Hariri, who also had Saudi citizenship, as does his son Saad.

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