(Telegraph-UK) Patrick Bishop - Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's invective against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was flowing. "The only way to topple this guy is to try him like Milosevic," he said. Jumblatt believes "there is no difference in essence between the Iraqi Ba'athists and the Syrian Ba'athists...the worst regimes are the Ba'athist regimes." Under the Syrians, he said, "tens of thousands of people were imprisoned. Intellectuals and politicians from Syria, from Lebanon, from Palestine were killed, executed." They include Jumblatt's father Kamal, murdered in 1977. He urged the Syrian opposition to seek Western support to help topple the Damascus regime. "I am not calling for military intervention in Syria, but I am asking the Syrian opposition to decide that without Western help there can be no change - without [it] they will be in jail or exiled and will be blackmailed and killed."
2006-01-17 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive