Former Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam reveals new details in his memoirs about a meeting between former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Damascus in the summer of 2004, describing it as the harshest encounter in the period leading up to Hariri’s assassination.
The memoirs, edited and introduced by Ibrahim Hamidi, are due to be published in early September by Raff Publishing, a subsidiary of the Saudi Research and Media Group (SRMG).
According to the memoirs, Assad summoned Hariri in July for a meeting at 7:30 a.m. attended by Maj. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, Brig. Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh and Col. Mohammed Khallouf. Assad’s harsh words caused Hariri’s blood pressure to rise and his nose to bleed.
The memoirs trace the roots of the crisis to the 1998 election of Lebanese army commander Gen. Emile Lahoud as president. Khaddam recounts that Bashar al-Assad pushed for Lahoud to succeed President Elias Hrawi, persuading his father, President Hafez al-Assad, to back the army commander despite objections from most Lebanese leaders close to Damascus, including Walid Jumblatt, Nabih Berri and Hariri. Khaddam also says Ghazi Kanaan pressured Lebanese lawmakers to support Lahoud.
Khaddam says he subsequently asked Hafez al-Assad to relieve him of responsibility for the Lebanon portfolio because his opposition to Lahoud was well known. The file then passed to Bashar al-Assad.
“Thus ended the political management of this complicated file, and it fell into the hands of the Syrian security services,” Khaddam writes.
Later that same morning, Khaddam says he was scheduled to meet Assad and found him “agitated and tense.” Assad recounted his meeting with Hariri directly to him.
“Rafik Hariri was here, and I spoke to him clearly and frankly in the presence of the officers,” Khaddam quotes Assad as saying. “I told him he was not allowed to work to bring in a president other than Emile Lahoud. I am the one who chooses who governs Lebanon, and whoever defies me, I will break his bones.”
Khaddam says he was stunned by the remarks and challenged Assad: “You are speaking to the prime minister of Lebanon, who represents the Sunni Muslims in his country. Have you considered the repercussions if your words reach the media? How can you address Lebanon’s prime minister this way in the presence of these officers?”
According to Khaddam’s account, Assad then calmed down and asked his vice president to invite Hariri to meet him in an effort to “erase the consequences” of the encounter.
The memoirs say Hariri initially refused, telling Khaddam by telephone: “After my last visit, I will not visit Damascus.”
He later agreed to meet Khaddam in Bloudan, northwest of Damascus, where he appeared “hurt.”
“I will never forget my meeting with Bashar al-Assad as long as I live,” Hariri told him.
The memoirs go on to recount the dispute over extending Lahoud’s presidential term. On Aug. 18, 2004, Khaddam says Assad told him he had decided against an extension.
“No one in the world supports Lahoud. The Arab states do not support him, and the majority of Lebanese oppose him,” Assad is quoted as saying, adding that he had been “firm” with the Lebanese president.
Just three days later, however, while Khaddam was in France, Hariri called to tell him that Assad had changed his mind and summoned him to Damascus for a brief and tense meeting.
“You have to decide where you stand. Are you with Syria or against it?” Assad told Hariri, according to Khaddam’s account of what Hariri later told him.
Khaddam writes that Hariri told him Jumblatt had advised him to accept the extension and then resign. Khaddam himself advised Hariri to agree to the extension, leave Lebanon and announce his resignation from abroad.
Hariri subsequently informed Rustom Ghazaleh that he accepted the extension and traveled to Sardinia to join his family. Days later, Khaddam says, Hariri called him and asked: “If I return to Lebanon, will my life be in danger?”
Khaddam reassured him that he had agreed to everything demanded of him and that Assad “still needs him because the constitutional amendment has not yet been completed.”
The memoirs also recount a last-minute attempt, through Spanish mediation, to avert a UN Security Council meeting. After five hours of contacts, Washington, Paris and London agreed to cancel the session in return for a Syrian commitment to abandon the extension.
But Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa told his Spanish counterpart: “Lebanon is an independent state and we have nothing to do with the matter.”
The Security Council met the following day and adopted Resolution 1559, which called for respect for Lebanon’s sovereignty and political independence, the withdrawal of remaining foreign forces and a presidential election free from foreign interference.
The memoirs characterize the resolution as having been adopted under Chapter VII and as placing the Syrian regime under Security Council scrutiny.
Khaddam’s testimony carries particular significance because of his position at the heart of Syria’s governance of Lebanon. For decades, he was the Syrian official responsible for the Lebanon portfolio before, as he recounts, responsibility passed to Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian security services.
In his account, a single threat uttered during a deeply personal confrontation becomes a key to understanding a period that culminated in a complete breakdown between Damascus and broad segments of Lebanese society.
The full account of the meeting, as well as the events preceding and following it, appears in the book’s chapter titled “The Assassination of Rafik Hariri.”
