Former VP Abdel Halim Khaddam addressed "civilan and military" members of the Baath party in Syria in an open letter urging them to do their patriotic duty and "shift to the side of the people and contribute in the uprooting of a regime whose continuation poses a grave danger for the future of the country, its national unity, and its security and stability." (Arabic. "Free Syria," 7/5/06).
In the letter, his second since his defection, Khaddam told the Baathists they had two choices, "the choice of the homeland and the people, and another choice which places you on the side of tyranny and corruption." He attacked the ruling Assad family regime holding it responsible for the "paralysis in the state institutions," and for the "regime's repression of citizens," and for the "break up of national unity."
Khaddam warned the Baathists not to be "fooled by those who have a hold on power who tell you that the [Baath] party is the leader of society and the state, when you know full well that it is the ruling family and its security apparatuses who rule the state, and that the role of the party's institutions is merely to cover up for errors and deviances." He asked the Baathists, "are you responsible for the impulsive and adventurist political decisions which have brought great damage to the country? Are they the work of party leadership or the work of an heir who does not realize the danger his actions pose to the country?"
He further accused the regime of a series of political assassinations of Syrian and Lebanese figures, and claimed that former Syrian interior minister Ghazi Kanaan was murdered "because he knew the truths behind the assassination of Rafik Hariri, and he knew who killed the former Lebanese Mufti Sheikh Hassan Khaled, and Kalam Jumblatt" and others, and because he knew "the secrets of the [Lebanese] al-Madina Bank scandal." He added that "the day of reckoning" for the regime is near, and called on the Baathists to help "in saving the country and liberating the people from the prison in which the regime has put them."
The National Salvation Front had included a call to Baath party members, civilian and military, in the concluding statement of its inaugural conference, inviting them to "join the ranks of the people in order to rid Syria of a corrupt and tyrannical regime."