Syria ready for regional war, blasts UN resolution

SYRIA: Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Sunday said Damascus was ready for regional war and condemned a draft UN resolution seeking to end the violence in Lebanon as merely a recipe for more conflict.

"If Israel attacked Syria by any means from the ground or the air, our leadership has ordered the armed forces to reply immediately," he said, after meeting with pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.

Muallem, who was due to participate on Monday in Beirut in an Arab foreign ministers' meeting on Israel's devastating 26-day-old offensive on Lebanon, also condemned a UN draft resolution on the conflict.

The draft, sponsored by the United States and France, called for a "full cessation" of fighting, but not for the immediate pullout of Israeli forces from Lebanon.

"The UN resolution is a recipe for the continuation of the war... and a recipe for civil war (in Lebanon) that nobody has interest in but Israel," Muallem said.

"We defend Lebanon and its resistance against any plan that they try to impose on it through UN Security Council resolutions which do not reflect the Lebanese military victory over the Israeli army," he said.

"The American-French draft totally favours Israel." Israel has said it has no plans to attack Syria but analysts have expressed fears of a wider conflict after Israel bombed Lebanese border posts close to Syria and also overflew President Bashar al-Assad's palace in northern Syria in June.

Addressing the US and Israel, Muallem said: "Anyone who thinks they can finish with Hezbollah by military means is harbouring illusions. Hezbollah will remain steadfast ... because it is defending its right and land."

Muallem said a ceasefire could only be achieved if Israel withdrew from Lebanon, including the disputed Shebaa Farms, brokered an equitable prisoner swap and agreed to establish a buffer zone on both sides of the border.

Asked by reporters on his arrival by land in the Lebanese northern city of Tripoli about the possibility of the conflict broadening, Muallem said: "Welcome to the regional war.

"Syria has started to prepare and we do not hide our preparations, and we will respond to any Israeli aggression immediately," he said.

"I put myself at the disposal of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and for the defence of Lebanon," he said, in reference to the Hezbollah leader.

"Hezbollah put an end to the power balance favouring Israel," he said.

Damascus, Monday, AFP