WASHINGTON, Oct 15: A series of clashes in the last year between American and Syrian troops, including a prolonged firefight this summer that killed several Syrians, has raised the prospect that cross-border military operations may become a dangerous new front in Iraq, The New York Times said on Saturday.

Citing unnamed current and former military and government officials, the newspaper said the firefight, between US Army Rangers and Syrian troops along the border with Iraq, was the most serious of the clashes with President Bashar al Assad’s forces.

It illustrated the dangers facing American troops as Washington tries to apply more political and military pressure Damascus.

One of Mr Bush’s most senior aides said that so far US forces in Iraq had moved right up to the border to cut off the entry of guerillas, but he insisted that they had refrained from going over it, The Times said.

But other officials, who say they got their information in the field or by talking to Special Operations commanders, say the operations have spilled over the border - sometimes by accident, sometimes by design, the paper pointed out.

Some current and former officials add that the United States military is considering plans to conduct special operations inside Syria, using small covert teams for cross-border intelligence gathering, The Times reported.

Increasingly, officials say, Syria is to the Iraq war what Cambodia was in the Vietnam war: a sanctuary for fighters, money and supplies to flow over the border and, ultimately, a place for a shadow struggle, the paper said. —AFP