THE President of Syria, Bashar Assad, yesterday took an undiplomatic swipe at Tony Blair’s plans to help reform the Palestinian Authority, comparing the policy to that of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand.

Speaking the day after he had been greeted at Downing Street, the Syrian leader spoke at length and candidly with a group of journalists and academics at a seminar hosted by the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He not only dismissed proposed reforms to the Palestinian Authority, announced by the Prime Minister in the Commons on Monday, but also sparked fresh controversy by likening Palestinian suicide bombers to the Israeli Army.

On the third day of his official visit to Britain, Mr Assad said that Iraq did not pose a threat to the region and that any US-led military campaign would probably have more to do with oil interests than weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Assad was most scathing about efforts to reform Yassir Arafat’s Government, which Britain wants to address in a special conference chaired by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, next month.

The British have invited Palestinians, representatives of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, Russia, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to discuss how to reform the notoriously corrupt Palestinian Authority and help it to prepare for elections. The US State Department yesterday welcomed the initiative as “providing an opportunity to reinforce and encourage Palestinian reform efforts”.

Mr Assad, however, said that the entire issue of reform was a transparent bid by Israel to install a more submissive Palestinian leadership. “They (the Israelis) want to weaken Arafat to bring a group of people — we know them by name — with good relations with Israel,” he said.

“The result will be turbulence in the Middle East. The result of reforms will be destruction.”

Although he did not name Mr Blair, the criticism seemed clearly aimed at the Downing Street initiative, which was only a few hours old. Mr Assad said that the prime cause of the present conflict in the Middle East was Israel’s occupation of Arab lands. Serious reform was impossible until the Israelis withdrew.

“People are trying to address the symptoms rather than the root cause (of the problem). This is what I call the tactic of the ostrich that buries its head in the sand,” he said.

Mr Assad also remained unrepentant for allowing militant Palestinian groups, responsible for suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians, to have offices in Damascus. He insisted that the offices were not involved directly in military operations and defended the use of suicide attacks in Israel.

“What is the difference between Palestinians and Israelis?” he asked. “The Israelis have actual bombs that they put on planes and missiles and drop on Palestinian homes and kill Palestinians. The Palestinians do not have missiles and F16s (fighter bombers), so they go by themselves and kill Israelis. If we want to condemn the bombs, we have to condemn both sides.”

He argued that regardless of his difference of opinion with Britain and the West over the violence, all sides wanted the same outcome — a peaceful solution.

“Why waste time debating the right or wrong? The more protracted our discussion, the longer this violence will continue.”

The only way to stop the conflict was for Israel to dismantle its settlements and withdraw its troops from all occupied Arab lands, including the Golan Heights captured from Syria in 1967, he said.

Mr Assad also spoke out against the looming US-led war against Iraq.

Syria had voted in favour of the tough new UN Security Council resolution on Iraq to try to delay the countdown to war, he said, giving warning that a new conflict would trigger more turmoil in the Middle East and breed more “terrorism”.

Although Syria had had strained and sometimes violent disagreements with Baghdad, he did not regard the regime headed by Saddam Hussein as a “threat” to the region, he said. “The priorities the United States has set are not convincing and they are not really related to weapons of mass destructionand Saddam Hussein.” There is a great conviction in your region and in our region that the big issue is oil.”

Palestinians offer cautious support

Jerusalem: Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator, gave the Blair initiative a positive response last night, but said that focusing on Palestinian reforms would be meaningless without progress towards peace (Stephen Farrell writes).

The Palestinians say that asking Yassir Arafat to select the delegation acknowledges his continuing relevance, despite Israeli and US insistence to the contrary, and they view the conference as a gesture to fill a “vacuum” left when President Bush’s shelved his peace plan until after the Israeli elections.

Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian minister, said: “We see in it a bonus to compensate the Palestinian side for the harm inflicted on it because of the bias toward Israel, which was expressed by the UK’s ally the USA when it decided to freeze the diplomatic action in order to please Israel.”

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