DAMASCUS, Oct 13: Syria summoned the US ambassador on Friday to deliver a strong protest against an implied threat made against Damascus by a senior State Department official, a diplomatic source said.

Ambassador Theodore Kattouf was summoned to the foreign ministry and handed a protest against remarks made on Thursday by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who said Washington could take military action against countries such as Syria in its campaign against terrorism if they did not comply with its demands.

The Syrian protest emphasized that Syrian, Arab and Islamic demands for making a distinction in the campaign between terrorism and the right to resist foreign occupation were in accordance with the U.N. Charter and international law, the source said.

“The ambassador was informed about Syria’s protest against Mr. Armitage’s remarks. He was told there should be a distinction between terrorism and the people’s right to resist foreign occupation in accordance with international law and the United Nations charter,” the diplomat said.

Syria considered Armitage’s statement contradictory to remarks by US President George W. Bush that Syria had expressed its readiness to take part in the war against terrorism and that Washington took that seriously, the source added.

“The Syrian foreign ministry told the ambassador it was unable to understand the contradiction in remarks by the US president and the deputy foreign minister, especially as Syria has strongly condemned the terrorist suicide attacks on New York and Washington,” he said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said there was no reason to be upset because Armitage merely restated Bush’s remarks that nations had to choose. Boucher did not repeat Armitage’s threat of military action.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has condemned the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington in which thousands of people were killed and called in a message to Bush for a world effort to uproot terrorism.

But Armitage told reporters on Thursday that targets in the US-led anti-terrorism campaign included all groups that threatened the interests of the United States and its allies.

Asked what the consequences would be if countries such as Syria did not meet US expectations in the campaign against terrorism, Armitage said: “The consequences might be whatever the coalition finds worthy and it runs the gamut from isolation to financial investigation, all the way up through possibly military action.”

Syria is on the US State Department’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism” because it hosts Lebanese and Palestinian oarganisations that attack Israel, a US ally.

Syria argues that they are not terrorist groups but are legitimately fighting to liberate Arab lands from Israeli occupation.

Bush said in a news conference after Armitage’s remarks that Washington took seriously Syrian offers of help in the fight against terrorism but wanted to see results, not words. —Reuters