Syria demands U.N. condemn Israeli attack

United Nations - Syria demanded that the U.N. Security Council condemn Israel's airstrike against a purported terrorist training camp near Damascus, but the United States said it would not support any resolution that does not also criticize attacks against Israel.

At an emergency meeting called at Syria's request Sunday, most council diplomats spoke out against both the airstrike and the suicide bombing in the Israeli port city of Haifa that killed 19 people and prompted Israel's retaliation.

However, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte focused his condemnation on the Haifa attack, while blaming Syria for harboring terrorists.

"The United States believes that Syria is on the wrong of the side of the war on terrorism," he said. "We believe it is in Syria's interest, and in the broader interest of Middle East peace, for Syria to stop harboring and supporting the groups that perpetrate acts such as the one that occurred yesterday."

The attack on Sunday was the first Israeli strike deep within Syria since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and it alarmed other Middle Eastern nations.

The Arab League said the bombing "exposes the deteriorating situation in the region to uncontrollable consequences, which could drag the whole region into violent whirlpool."

The Islamic militant group Hamas said it fired 16 mortar shells at Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip overnight in retaliation for the Israeli airstrike. The Israeli army said it was checking the claim. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Hamas also said it would also carry out more attacks in Israel. "Any aggression against an Arab or Islamic country is an aggression against the Palestinian people and, God willing, our response to this aggression will be decisive," read a statement on a Hamas web site.

"We call on our fighters ... to respond quickly, and in the heart of the Zionist entity, to this serious escalation," it said.

The Bush administration urged restraint in the Middle East. President Bush telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to offer condolences for the Haifa bombing and the two agreed on a need to continue fighting terrorism and "on the need to avoid heightened tension in the region at this time," said Ken Lesius, a White House spokesman.

It seemed unlikely Syria would retaliate. It has 380,000 active duty soldiers, but Israel holds a commanding technological edge. Israel is more worried about Syria's growing missile program and its ability to launch chemical and poison weapons into Israel's cities.

Leaders of Islamic Jihad and other militant groups are based in Syria, but Jihad on Sunday denied having any training bases there. Syrian villagers near the targeted site in Ein Saheb, 14 miles northwest of Damascus, said the camp had been used by Palestinian gunmen in the 1970s but was later abandoned — and was now only used by picnickers and other visitors to its spring and olive groves.

Plainclothes security officials banned journalists from approaching the camp. Dense trees blocked the site from view.

The raid was a dramatic new tactic for Israel in its attempts to stop Palestinian militants. Closures, assassinations and military strikes into Palestinian areas have failed to stop suicide attacks, and Washington strongly opposes expelling Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as Israel has threatened.

In the West Bank, Arafat declared a state of emergency and installed an emergency Cabinet with Ahmed Qureia as prime minister. Negroponte indicated that the United States broadly opposed the text of a draft resolution submitted by Syria and questioned why it made no mention of the Haifa attack.

"It's just incredible to me that in the wake of an event like that, that a draft resolution coming from a delegation of the council would have no reference whatsoever to this dastardly act," he told reporters. "Another resolution on the Middle East is not what is needed."

Negroponte, the 15-member council's president for October, has not scheduled another meeting to discuss the document, saying diplomats needed time to consult with their governments.

The United States has regularly used its veto to block resolutions condemning Israel, its close ally. The U.S. position is that resolutions must roundly condemn all forms of terrorism.

Negroponte did not say whether the United States would exercise the veto power it enjoys as one of five permanent members. Another diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said discussion was continuing and no one had threatened a veto.

Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad of Syria, the council's only Arab member, urged his colleagues to adopt the resolution condemning the "military aggression carried by Israel against the sovereignty and territory" of Syria. The document also demands that Israel stop acts "which might lead to a dangerous deterioration that threatens regional and international peace and security." -- Associated Press

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