Syrian President Bashar Assad, battling a popular uprising, named a former agriculture minister and staunch loyalist as prime minister on Wednesday to form a new government after last month\'s parliamentary election. Syrian State television SANA  said Riyad Hijab replaces Adel Safar, who was appointed in April last year shortly after the revolt began in the south and later spread across the country, presenting Assad with the sternest challenge to his 12-year rule. A former agriculture minister, Hijab, 46, was born in Syria\'s eastern Deir al-Zor province and holds a PhD in engineering. He was appointed minister of agriculture in April 2011. Prior to that, from 2004 to 2008, he served as head of the Baath party in Deir al-Zor. He later became the governor of Quneitra province, near the border with Israel, and subsequently the governor of Lattakia. He is married with four children. Hijab\'s appointment comes days after a defiant Assad dismissed allegations that his government had a hand in last month\'s Houla massacre and accused foreign-backed forces of plotting to destroy Syria. \"What happened in Houla and elsewhere are brutal massacres which even monsters would not have carried out,\" Assad told the parliament on Sunday of the May 25 killing of 108 people, including 49 children, near the central town of Houla. \"The masks have fallen and the international role in the Syrian events is now obvious,\" he said in his first address to the assembly since the parliamentary election. The polls were the perfect response \"to the criminal killers and those who finance them,\" Assad said, stressing that his regime was determined to push through reforms but not at the expense of security. Most Syrian opposition figures boycotted the parliamentary election and a prominent dissident said that by appointing Hijab, a committed member of the ruling Baath Party, the president was snubbing demands for change. \"We expected Assad to play a game and appoint a nominal independent but he chose a hardcore Baathist,\" opposition campaigner Najati Tayyara said according to Reuters \"In any case the cabinet is just for show in Syria and even more so now, with the security apparatus totally taking over\".