Syria cracks down on Islamist militants - officials

DAMASCUS, May 3 (Reuters) Syrian security forces have killed scores of suspected Islamist militants, many of them linked to al Qaeda in Iraq, in a crackdown which has escalated in recent weeks, Syrian officials said today.

A Baath Party member familiar with the unpublicised operations said at least one senior al Qaeda figure was arrested last month among hundreds of detained militants.

''The al Qaeda man is non-Syrian. Remember that Syria has experience in this sort of terrorism,'' the Baath Party member said, referring to a ferocious campaign by the state against the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s.

Several suspected militants, including one wearing an explosives belt, and a senior security officer were killed recently in a clash in a suburb of Damascus where many Iraqi refugees live, the Baath party member said.

''The bomber was in a public place. He was under surveillance and a catastrophe was avoided''.

Five people were killed in another confrontation in central Syria, the official said, and similar operations have been conducted around the country this year targeting militants in Syria and others crossing its border with Iraq.

Unlike sporadic operations reported by state newspapers last year, this campaign has not been covered in the official media. But Western diplomats in Damascus said they had seen credible reports suggesting a coordinated crackdown was taking place.

The US military has also acknowledged Syria is doing more to stop fighters crossing its border into Iraq.

''There has been some movement by the Syrians... there has been a reduction in the foreign fighter flow making their way into Iraq, as we have observed here over the last month,'' US military spokesman Major-General William Caldwell told a news conference in Baghdad on Thursday.

But US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after meeting Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem today -- the highest-level US-Syrian contact in two years -- that she again urged Syria to prevent foreign fighters entering Iraq.

SPILLOVER Damascus has denied US charges that it allows insurgents to cross into Iraq and says al Qaeda fighters thought to be involved in attacks on Iraqi Shi'ite civilians are as much a threat to Syria as to Iraq.

''We are on alert now more than ever. The more the situation deteriorates in Iraq the more it will have ramifications on Syria,'' a senior official said.

''This fire engulfing Iraq will end up destroying the rest of the region if it continues. Syria differentiates between resistance to the American occupation and sectarian slaughter.'' But the official said Syria had no intention of informing the United States about its latest security effort.

Damascus supplied information to Washington after the September 11 attacks but stopped the intelligence cooperation two years ago when ties worsened over Syria's role in Lebanon and Iraq.

''The Americans didn't give us credit for anything even when our help saved American lives,'' the official said.

However, Syria has recently sought to improve relations with Iraq's US-backed government led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist who is close to Iran.

''Syria is starting to show genuine worry about al Qaeda,'' said an Iraqi official visit Damascus. ''It doesn't want Iraq to collapse and see Islamist provinces on its borders.'' Reuters RS DB2251