Syria asks UN to condemn Israel

Syria insists there are no militant training camps on its soil

An emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council has heard widespread condemnation of Israel for carrying out an air raid on Syrian territory.

Israel says its target was a training camp used by the Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad - which carried out a suicide bombing in the Israeli city of Haifa on Saturday, killing 19 people.

Syria, which requested the crisis talks, called for a vote on a draft resolution condemning what it called Israel's "military aggression" but the meeting was adjourned without a vote.

UN ambassadors are now consulting their governments on their next steps.

The secretary general strongly deplores the Israeli air strike on Syrian territory UN statement World reaction

Damascus has insisted the site targeted by Israel was a civilian zone. It said Israel was threatening security in the Middle East with its first attack on Syrian soil in nearly 30 years.

At the council meeting, all the diplomats except US ambassador John Negroponte spoke out against the Israeli action.

Most Security Council members also condemned the Haifa bombing.

Mr Negroponte urged restraint, but said there was no need for a new Security Council resolution.

"What is needed is for Syria to dismantle the terrorism in its borders," he said.

Outrage

Syria's draft resolution "strongly condemns the military aggression carried by Israel against the sovereignty and territory of the Syrian Arab Republic".

It condemns the Israeli raid as a violation of international law and the UN Charter, and calls on the Security Council to demand Israel does not act in a way that threatens regional security.

"We hope that the message of the Security Council is very clear for Israel - to stop such actions and not to expose the situation in the Middle East to more grave and dangerous developments," the Syrian ambassador to the UN, Fayssal Mekdad, told the BBC's World Today programme.

RECENT SUICIDE ATTACKS 9 September: 15 killed in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv 19 August: 23 killed in Jerusalem 11 June: 17 killed in Jerusalem 18 May: 7 killed in Jerusalem 5 March: 17 killed in Haifa Eyewitness: Dead children Bomber's deadly mission Yom Kippur shrouded in grief

The US has often used its veto to block resolutions condemning Israel because it says others involved in the Middle East conflict should also be included.

Syria and Israel are long-standing enemies, still technically at war over Israel's occupation and illegal annexation of the Golan Heights.

Israel's ambassador, Dan Gillerman warned the other countries against lending their support to the Syrian resolution.

"Syria deserves no support for its complicity in murder and the Council would commit and unforgivable act of moral blindness were it to act otherwise," he told the Security Council.

Mr Gillerman left the chamber as soon as he had finished speaking, to observe the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.

Earlier, he had expressed "outrage and dismay" at the fact that the council had rushed into session shortly before the Jewish holiday.

"For Syria to call a Security Council meeting is as if Bin Laden had called a Security Council meeting after 9/11," he said.

Change of policy

Israel said the target of the air-raid was the Ein Saheb camp, 22 kilometres (14 miles) outside Damascus, which it said was used by several militant groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Israel released footage of what it said was the target of the raid

Syrian media have described Ein Saheb as a Palestinian refugee camp.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said the raid "could aggravate the deteriorating situation in the region".

"Syria has practised the highest level of self-restraint, realising that Israel is trying to create pretexts ... to export its internal crisis to the region," Mr Sharaa said in a letter to the UN.

The BBC's Kim Ghattas in Beirut says that, given Syria's obsolete army, diplomacy is Damascus' safest path.

On Sunday, Israelis began burying those killed in the Haifa bombing , including three generations of the Zev Aviv family which lost five family members.

Four children and several Arabs were among the dead. About 50 other people were injured, in what was one of the deadliest suicide attacks since the start of the Palestinian intifada three years ago.