Syria VP Shara makes first appearance in a month

Syrian Vice President Faruq al-Shara made his first public appearance in over a month on Sunday, an AFP journalist said, following rumours that he had tried to defect. Shara, who was expected to meet the visiting head of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy committee, Aladin Borujerdi, was last seen in public at a state funeral for top security officials who were killed in a bomb blast on July 18. Speculation has swirled since last week over the fate of Shara, the highest-ranking Sunni Muslim official in President Bashar al-Assad's minority Alawite-led regime, since the opposition claimed he had tried to defect. Assad's regime has been rattled by several high-profile defections as the Syrian conflict has escalated, including former prime minister Riad Hijab and prominent General Manaf Tlass, one of Assad's childhood friends. Syria's state news agency SANA said on Saturday that a fake email had been sent out in its name claiming that the vice president had been sacked, adding that the "information is completely wrong." After the opposition claims, state television on August 19 quoted a statement from Shara's office saying that "Mr Shara has never thought about leaving the country or going anywhere." A former minister who defected this year also said earlier this month that it was "well-known" that Shara had tried to leave the country and was under house arrest. Syria was also forced to deny that Foreign Minister Walid Muallem had announced on Twitter he had replaced Shara, with SANA saying this month that the information was "wrong" and that Muallem did not have a Twitter account. Shara, 73, has served in senior posts for almost 30 years under both Assad and his father and predecessor Hafez al-Assad.