Abdel Halim Khaddam, the former vice-president of Syria, assured Thursday, during a press conference in Brussels, that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad would give in and that the change would take place peacefully.
According to him, the young people, who are at the head of the protests, do not want military intervention from another country.
Describing the situation as “very serious”, Abdel Halim Khaddam spoke of “a regime based on security and military institutions” which “has adopted corruption” and which has seized national wealth. This corruption, according to him, impoverished the people, which led them to feel oppressed and to rise up. “Young people are the future of Syria,” he said.
The former vice-president assured that al-Assad’s power would “give in”. For Abdel Halim Khaddam, “the change will happen peacefully” because young people “do not want military intervention from another country”. He called for the establishment of a democratic regime, with free elections and hoped that the “corrupt would be judged”.
Abdel Halim Khaddam, one of the main figures of the “old guard” of the Baath party in power in Syria, resigned in June 2005 after criticizing the foreign policy followed by Damascus. He then went into exile in Paris. In 2006, he founded the Syrian National Salvation Front (FSN), a coalition of opponents in exile. Abdel Halim Khaddam was convicted in 2008 in absentia by a Syrian military court for having notably “organized a plot to overthrow political power”. Regarding these accusations, Abdel Halim Khaddam declared that he was not “opposed to the establishment of a commission of inquiry”.
