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The dramatic interview that former Syrian vice-president Abdel-Halim Khaddam gave to Al-Arabiya television last week in which he sharply criticized the Syrian regime's policies in Lebanon and implicitly implicated it in the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri has injected a new political dimension into an already complex and fluid situation.

Mr. Khaddam's main revelations would seem to be that the Syrian leadership, including President Basher Assad, threatened Mr. Hariri before his assassination last February; that Syrian intelligence officers - including Rustom Ghazali, the former intelligence chief in Lebanon, exploited that country for years as a personal fief, working with Lebanese security officers and in close co-ordination with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud; and that a sophisticated act such as Mr. Hariri's murder could only be undertaken by a disciplined organization - and if Syrians were involved, it could not have happened without the knowledge of the top leadership.

None of this is new, but it is all very significant. The information that Mr. Khaddam provided in the TV interview from Paris corroborates numerous facts and allegations already gathered from other sources by the United Nations-run inquiry into Mr. Hariri's death. For corroboration to come from such a high source who intimately knows the inside of the Syrian political system is a major push forward for the UN investigation. Mr. Khaddam has been a senior political thug in Syria for 35 years, but, in such cases, a thug's testimony is very useful - assuming it is factually correct. The convergence of his statements with similar evidence from other sources, investigators say privately, is both clear and useful.

The second important thing about Mr. Khaddam's behaviour is that it seems to represent the first major political crack in the top-level Syrian solidarity system that has long defined the regime in Damascus. Whether this crack will give way to a torrent remains to be seen. Either way, its significance should not be underestimated. Mr. Khaddam's pointing of fingers at Mr. Assad is the equivalent of Vice-President Dick Cheney saying that George Bush knew all along that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction but was determined to overthrow Saddam Hussein on any pretext.

If the combination of the revelation and its source is compelling, the political consequences may be huge. The interview set off a new round of speculation and expectation in Syria and Lebanon, and coincided with moves by UN investigators to request interviews with Syria's President, foreign minister and other senior officials.

The cumulative impact of these developments raises the diplomatic and political heat on Syria, because Mr. Assad's government is now challenged by a new and dangerous phenomenon - his own regime's former pillars. This is extremely worrying for Syria, which now finds itself challenged simultaneously by a credible domestic force, the Lebanese public, and the world acting through the UN.

The UN probe's request to interview Mr. Assad and others will be the next litmus test.

It represents yet another step forward in the determination of the UN to keep investigating the Hariri murder and not get sidetracked by political diversions or tricks, whether from the Middle East or the West. It also reflects the determination of the investigators to speak with all potentially relevant persons, including the most senior political and security officials in Syria and Lebanon. And it will be a key test of the UN's demand, in Security Council Resolution 1644 of Dec. 15, that Syria must "co-operate fully and unconditionally with the commission," including a specific demand that Syria respond "unambiguously and immediately in those areas adduced by the commissioner and also that it implements without delay any future request of the commission."

Well, one such request is here: an interview with the top leaders in Damascus. Resolution 1644 also includes a key new wrinkle: It "requests the commission to report to the [Security] Council on the progress of the inquiry every three months from the adoption of this resolution, including on the co-operation received from the Syrian authorities, or any time before that date if the commission deems that such co-operation does not meet the requirements of this resolution and of Resolutions 1595 and 1636."

In other words, the element of time, or playing for time, seems to be changing hands from a mechanism the Syrian government has always used to one that the UN will use to press the Syrians to co-operate more diligently and quickly.

Another key development is the slow expansion of the Hariri murder probe into possible linkages with the dozen or so other bombings and killings that have occurred in Lebanon since October of 2004. This selective expansion, also on the basis of Resolution 1644, is critically important for Lebanon, because it holds out the hope that the perpetrators of the other bombings will also be identified and brought to justice - and presumably ending this ugly modern era of politics by bombs.

UN officials are also preparing to talk with their Lebanese counterparts about what kind of "tribunal of an international character" will be established to try those who are accused on the strength of the evidence being collected. The creeping expansion of the Hariri assassination probe into a wider international mechanism increases the likelihood of bringing to justice those who have perpetrated political terrorism in recent years - and also of reducing such criminality in the future.

Rami Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star.