BEIRUT – A former Syrian minister who defected this year said Saturday that it was “well-known" that Vice President Farouq Al-Shara had tried to leave and was under house arrest. The comments by former deputy oil minister Abdo Hussameddin came after the regime in Damascus denied opposition claims that Shara, the most senior Sunni official in President Bashar Al-Assad's Alawite-led regime, had defected. “Shara's position is well known. He has been trying to leave Syria," he told pan-Arab television Al-Arabiya. “But there are a series of circumstances that prevent him from leaving, especially the fact that he has been under house arrest for some time," he said, adding that top level officials in Syria were being kept under surveillance. Syrian state television had earlier quoted a statement from Shara's office saying: “Mr Shara has never thought about leaving the country or going anywhere." Assad, battling a 17-month-old rebellion that has escalated into civil war, has suffered a string of defections including his prime minister Riyadh Hijab two weeks ago. The 73-year-old Shara kept a low profile as the rebellion mushroomed but appeared in public last month at a state funeral for three of Assad's top security officials killed in a bomb attack in Damascus. The statement said he had worked since the start of the uprising to find a peaceful, political solution and welcomed the appointment of Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi as a new international mediator for Syria. Brahimi, who hesitated for days to accept a job that France's UN envoy Gerard Araud called an “impossible mission," will replace former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is leaving at month's end in frustration over geopolitical jostling among world powers that undermined his peace mandate. Assad's forces have resorted increasingly to air power to hold back lightly armed insurgents in the capital Damascus and Aleppo, a northern commercial hub. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army bombarded neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria's largest city. Rebels hold several districts in the country's northern commercial hub and have tried to push back an army counter-offensive. Internet footage which activists said was filmed in Saif Al-Dawla on Saturday showed a plane making a low pass over buildings and dropping two bombs. The Observatory also said at least 20 armored vehicles moved into the eastern town of Mayadeen in Deir Al-Zor province, where Syria's 200,000 barrels per day of oil are produced. More than 130 people were killed in Syria on Saturday, it said, including 15 in Deir Al-Zor. Brahimi will have a new title, Joint Special Representative for Syria. Describing the situation in Syria as “absolutely terrible", he said he urgently needed to clarify what support the UN can give him and said it was too soon to say whether Assad should step down. “It's much too early for me to say. I don't know enough about what is happening," Brahimi said. — Agencies
