DAMASCUS: Syria’s Baath Party congress dashed domestic hopes for sweeping reform and diplomats said it was a missed opportunity to deflect growing international pressure on Damascus.

Billed as a springboard for change, the ruling party’s gathering ended on Thursday with plans to ease a 42-year-old emergency law that allows arbitrary arrest, but offered no major liberalisation of the tightly-controlled political system.

“This will not ease international pressure because these reforms are not enough,” said one diplomat. “The Americans will come up with a few more sticks after the conference.”

The Baath Party made no changes to its policy of backing anti-Israeli groups and gave no direct word on sealing its border with Iraq — both key US demands.

Washington already says it is concerned about a possible “pattern” of political killings in Lebanon. US newspapers say it has word of a “Syrian hit list” of Lebanese leaders.

Syria bowed to global pressure to end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April after the killing of a Lebanese ex-prime minister. Many Lebanese blamed Syria for the death.

Damascus denies any role, but the assassination of a prominent anti-Syrian columnist in the midst of Lebanese elections last month put it back in the spotlight.

UN chief Kofi Annan is now considering sending a United Nations verification team back to Lebanon, to check reports that Syrian intelligence agents are still in the country.

Syria says it has fulfilled a UN resolution demanding foreign troops quit Lebanon, but UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen heads to Syria to meet President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.

“The United States is sending a big signal to Damascus that it is trying to reactivate resolution 1559,” said Joshua Landis, who teaches Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

“Syria is in deep trouble because Washington is looking for an Act Two and Assad has done nothing at this conference to address this,” said Landis, who is in Syria researching a book.

Damascus, which says it is doing its best to stop insurgents crossing into Iraq, feels it cannot please the United States no matter what it does.

Assad said as much when he announced Syria’s pullout from Lebanon and told Baathists to ignore foreign pressure when they gathered to discuss reforms he promised would be a “great leap”. Diplomats and analysts say the United States and France favour isolating Syria to pressure the regime to change, but Damascus did itself no favours by coming up with half-measures and no timelines at its first congress in five years.

“If you measure this congress by expectations it is enough to call it a ... failure. Did they offer a socio-economic package? No,” said Ammar Abdul Hamid, a Syrian dissident and founder of an Arab think-tank focused on minority issues.

“This is a defunct regime. It is clear they cannot get Syria out of the quagmire. They cannot chart a path to reform. This snail’s pace does not work any more ... They are always doing too little, too late — far too little, far too late.”

Party officials say their meeting was intended to draw general guidelines for change, not formulate detailed policies.

Ammar Qurabi of the Arab Human Rights Organisation in Syria said limiting the scope of the emergency law to national security cases was meaningless.

“Since 1963, all those jailed or sentenced to death were accused of violating national security,” he said.

Activists complain that after weeks of talk about easing the Party’s grip on power, the congress elected a Regional Command consisted almost entirely of government and security officials.

The Baath Party recommended a review of the electoral law and ordered a new “Party Law” that officials said would allow political parties. But the law will ban parties based on religion or ethnicity, leaving out Kurdish and Islamist groups.—Reuters