DAMASCUS, Oct 4: President Bashar al Assad on Monday sacked eight cabinet members, including the holder of the key post of interior minister, as Syria comes under mounting pressure over its dominant role in Lebanon.

General Ali Hammud lost the interior portfolio to the head of Syria's political security service, General Ghazi Kanaan, state media said. The appointment of Kanaan, the long-time director of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, was seen by diplomats here as a sign Damascus was preparing to return to a more pragmatic policy towards its smaller neighbour.

Syria is already in the grips of five-month-old US economic sanctions and now faces the threat of UN Security Council action over its longstanding troop presence in Lebanon.

The economy and trade, industry, health, information, justice, social affairs and labour, and religious endowments ministers were also all replaced in the first major reshuffle since Prime Minister Mohammed Naji Otri took office in September 2003.

Amer Hosni Lotfi, head of the state marketing board for Syria's principal agricultural staple - cotton - replaced Ghassan Rifai as economy and trade minister. The editor of the ruling Baath party's daily, Mahdi Dakhlallah, replaced Ahmed al-Hassan, a former ambassador, as information minister.

Judge Mohammed al-Gafri took over from Nizar al-Assass as justice minister, while engineers' union boss Ghassan Tayara replaced Mohammed Safi in charge of industry. -AFP