Syria defies US threat, still backs Hamas, Hizbollah

DAMASCUS, Sep 28 (Reuters) Syria will keep supporting Hamas and Hizbollah despite U S threats to impose more sanctions on it, a government newspaper said today.

U S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatened this week to toughen sanctions Washington imposed on Syria in 2004, mainly because of its support for the two movements, which Washington regards as ''terrorist organisations''.

''Syria is more determined to stand by the resistance until the land is liberated and Israel is defeated,'' an editorial in the newspaper Baath said.

Both Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shi'ite movement whose July 12 cross-border raid into Israel triggered a 34-day war with the Jewish state, and the Islamist group Hamas which won elections and runs the Palestinian government, refuse to recognise Israel.

''If the U S administration is serious about combating terrorism then it should play a constructive role in pushing forward the peace process on the basis of U.N. resolutions 242 and 338,'' the newspaper said.

The UN resolutions, passed decades ago, emphasise the inadmissibility of acquiring territory through war, call on Israel to withdraw from Arab land it has occupied since 1967 and call for negotiations to reach a ''just and durable peace'' in West Asia.

''Absolute U S support for Israel is one of the main causes behind regional instability. The United States has helped Israel in the United Nations stand against any proposal for a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict,'' the newspaper said.

Rice said this week that the United States was going ''to have to look at tougher measures if Syria continues to be on the path that it's on.'' She said Washington would like other nations to join it in imposing ''other kinds of sanctions'' on Syria.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem told the U N General Assembly this week that the world pays the price when the U S government thinks it knows what Arabs want better than the Arabs themselves.

BAD RELATIONS Relations between the United States, Israel's chief ally, and Syria have been bad for years, and hit a new low after last year's assassination in Beirut of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, who was friendly with Washington.

A U N investigation said the assassination could not have been carried out without the knowledge of Syrian security officials. Damascus denies involvement.

Diplomats in Damascus say Washington was also angered by the Syrian response to an attack carried out by Muslim militants on the U S embassy in Damascus on September 12.

Syrian security forces foiled the attack, but Syrian officials later said U S policies in the region and U S support for Israel were to blame because they had provoked the four Syrians who carried out the attack.

In May 2004, Washington banned a number of U S exports to Syria, severed banking ties with the country's largest bank and barred Syrian flights to and from the United States.

REUTERS SP HT1835