Leila Hatoum, the Dubai-based Lebanese journalist who interviewed former Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam for Newsweek Middle East, says the importance and relevance of the interview can be gauged from the fact that Khaddam, once a close confidante of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad and his son, Bashar, has rarely spoken to the media on political matters since his defection from Syria to Paris in 2005.
So how did Hatoum land such an important and impressive interview?
“As a reporter in Lebanon 10 years ago, I interviewed a number of officials from Syria, Lebanon and all over the region,” she told Arab News from Dubai on Wednesday. “When Khaddam defected, I was one of the very few reporters who interviewed him shortly after. He defected in December 2005 and I interviewed him in May 2006.”
She said she approached him recently with a view to getting his perspective on what is happening in Syria.
“I wanted to see how he felt 10 years after that first interview,” she said. “His views are significant because he is one of the few people still living who served for nearly 40 years under Hafez Assad, the father, and then under Bashar, the son.”
According to Hatoum, Khaddam is one of very few Sunnis who managed to reach a high position in the government. “He was the Sunni vice president of an Alawite president,” she said. “In fact, at one point, he became Syria’s president when Hafez Assad died and shortly before Bashar took over; he was an interim president for 37 days between June and July 2000.”
Since Khaddam knew the Syrian regime “inside out,” Hatoum felt his observations would be “particularly valuable at the moment in light of what is currently happening in Syria.”
She feels, and rightly so, that since he has been away from Syria since 2005, “it gives him the added advantage of having an objective perspective on Syrian affairs.”
One of the most startling — but uncorroborated — claims that Khaddam makes in the interview is that the Russians informed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in advance of the failed July 15 coup attempt.
“Yes, according to him, the Russians were the ones who informed Erdogan a couple of days before that a coup was planned against him,” said Hatoum. “That killed the element of surprise and helped Erdogan defeat it.”
Hatoum quotes Khaddam as saying that “the way they (the Americans) treated Erdogan, their ally, was like stabbing him in the back. This pushed Turkey into Russia’s open arms.”
Khaddam comes across in the interview as a proud Syrian who is frustrated and agitated at his country’s suffering at the hands of the US, Russia and Iran.
Hatoum has been in Dubai for almost nine years; she has worked for the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires and Al-Arabiya News Channel. Last year she became senior deputy editor at Newsweek Middle East.

Source: Arab News