Syrian MPs yesterday called for former vice-president Abdel Halim Khaddam to be tried for treason and corruption after he publicly broke with President Bashar Al Assad.

Speaking from Paris, where he has lived since resigning as vice-president in June, Khaddam criticised the Syrian government for committing what he said were political blunders in Lebanon and failing to deliver economic and political reforms at home.

"I ask the Syrian leadership to try him ... for humiliating 10 million Syrians when he said half of the Syrian people are eating from the garbage," MP Umeima Faddoul told a session of Syria parliament.

"I tell him, those who eat from the garbage are traitors like you ... Treason is the darkest shade of black."

Khaddam also told Al Arabiya TV in an interview that Assad had threatened former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Al Hariri before he was assassinated in February. A veteran aide to Bashar's father, the late Hafez Al Assad who ruled Syria for 30 years, Khaddam would not speculate on who had ordered Hariri's murder, saying "we must wait" for the final results of a UN investigation that has already implicated senior Syrian officials.

Legislator after legislator stood up in parliament to accuse Khaddam of corruption and treason. "His comments last night constitute a criminal offence that reaches the level of treason and we demand he be put to trial before the Syrian security high court," an MP said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Bashar al-Assad (L) and former vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam. (AFP)