UNITED NATIONS - Syria on Monday accused Israel of inciting the United States to invade Iraq to distract attention from its own actions in the region, where it retains its grip on the Palestinian territories won in a 1967 war.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara used his country's annual address to the U.N. General Assembly opening debate to deliver a fierce critique of Israeli policy, as the Jewish state accused Damascus of "directing terrorism" and threatened preemptive strikes against militants on its territory.

Shara accused Israel of refusing to comply with 40 Security Council resolutions and hundreds of General Assembly resolutions demanding that Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territories as a step toward a Middle East peace. Washington had used Baghdad's noncompliance with U.N. resolutions as one of its rationales for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Instead, Shara said, Israel had built up a nuclear arsenal, expanded Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands, built a "racist segregation wall," which Israel says is intended to keep out suicide bombers, transformed its army into "armed gangs bent on systematic killings and war crimes" and shunned the peace process, "despite the hand extended in peace by the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese."

Hours before Shara spoke, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim called Syria "a central junction in regional terrorism" and accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of being involved in it "as a traffic officer."

Syria had earlier accused Israel of terrorism after a Palestinian Hamas militant died in a car bombing on Sunday in Damascus.

The United Nations had been of little help in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, which was as old as the world body itself, Shara said.

Despite the adoption of over 600 resolutions on the subject, Israel "did not implement a single one of them, and continues to find protection inside and outside the United Nations," he said.

"We are convinced that success in this endeavor will remain elusive unless these resolutions are implemented and peace is restored in accordance with the aspirations of the people of the region and the world," he said.

© 2004 Reuters Ltd

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