DUBAI (Reuters) - A former Syrian vice president launched an unprecedented attack on President Bashar al-Assad, saying he had threatened Rafik al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister who was assassinated in February. "Assad told me he had delivered some very, very harsh words to Hariri ... something like 'I will crush anyone who tries to disobey us'," Abdel-halim Khaddam said from his home in Paris.

A veteran aide to Bashar's father, the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Khaddam resigned in June. He was speaking in an interview with Al Arabiya television aired on Friday.Khaddam would not speculate on who had ordered Hariri's murder, saying "we must wait" for the final results of an investigation being carried out by the United Nations. That investigation has implicated senior Syrian officials and Khaddam's comments are likely to intensify pressure on Damascus.Khaddam noted: "In principle, no government body in Syria, be it a security apparatus or otherwise, can single-handedly take this decision (killing Hariri)," he said. "Bashar has said that if anybody in Syria was involved, that means I am involved."

By Marvine Howe, AUB, as the school is generally known, is still mourning its martyrs from Lebanon