Damascus - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner arrived in Damascus on Monday for a brief visit ahead of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's official visit to Syria in early September.

Damascus - Hamas' Damascus-based political chief Kh

Damascus  - Overshadowed by a bloody terror bombing in northern Lebanon, Syrian President Basher al-Assad and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman began Wednesday a two-day summit being dubbed by many commentators in the region as "historic."

It is the first top-level meeting between the two countries since the February 2005 car bomb assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri which triggered the pullout of Syrian forces from Lebanon that same year.

Damascus  - Syria is the "principal place for peace in the Arab region," Syria's top Muslim cleric said Tuesday during a meeting with visiting European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering.

"If Syria is in peace then the whole region is. But if it is in a state of war, the whole region will catch on fire," Syria's grand mufti Sheikh Ahmed Badr el-Din Hassoun said.

Hassoun said his country asked the European Parliament to play a vital and fundamental role in the peace process.

Damascus  - Syria on Monday drew parallels between the United States' current approach to the issue of its alleged nuclear activities, and Washington's having accused Baghdad of possessing weapons of mass destruction prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Comments published by state-owned newspaper al-Thawra, the de facto mouthpiece of the Syrian government, accused the US of pursuing a strategy of escalating tension in the Middle East and downplaying Syrian peace efforts,

Damascus  - Syria released Aref Dalilah, one of the country's most prominent dissidents, on Thursday after seven years in jail.

Several Arab human rights groups had been calling for his release, saying his health was deteriorating.

"My health is good, I just need some medical care," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Dalilah, whose release was also urged by international rights groups, said he could not confirm whether he was granted his freedom after a presidential pardon.