DAMASCUS, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a scathing attack against Lebanon’s leaders on Thursday, accusing them of turning their country into a hotbed of conspiracy against Damascus. In an unprecedented attack on the Beirut government, Assad said Prime Minister Fouad Siniora had allowed Lebanon to become a base for Syria’s enemies.

"The truth we see today is that Lebanon has become a passageway, a factory and a financier of these conspiracies," he said in a televised speech.Syria, long the main power-broker in Lebanon, ended its three-decade military presence in its neighbour in April amid an international outcry and mass protests over the February killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.Assad accused Hariri’s supporters of exploiting his death for political ends, saying the late Hariri had been Syria’s main ally in Lebanon."The truth is those people, or most of them, are blood merchants. They created a market out of Hariri’s blood … Everything has a price," Assad said.

Parliamentary elections in May and June ushered in a Lebanese parliament critical of Damascus for the first time in decades, but relations between the two countries have been strained.

Many of the Lebanese now in power blamed Syria for Hariri’s death from the outset. Syria has always said it had nothing to do with the killing and has dismissed as politically motivated a U.N. inquiry that implicated its officials.