Syria heartened by Obama's plan for Iraq: envoy

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Syria said on Friday it was heartened by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's plan to pull U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office since it reflects the desire of Iraq and its neighbors.

"We feel ... encouraged by what we hear as promises from the elected president, Mr. Obama, that he would like to withdraw the American forces from Iraq within a fixed timetable," Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told reporters after a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Iraq.

"We encourage him to do so because this is the will of the Iraqi people as well as the will of the neighboring countries of Iraq (and) the international community," he said.

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has agreed to a 2011 withdrawal date in a draft security pact to replace a U.N. mandate that expires at the end of this year.

The agreement has not been finalized, and it is possible a deal will not be reached before Obama takes office on January 20.

The United States has accused Syria of not doing enough to prevent the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq to join the insurgency against U.S., coalition and Iraqi forces, a charge repeated by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad on Friday.

Last month the U.S. military carried out an air strike in eastern Syria that a U.S. official said killed a top smuggler of foreign fighters into Iraq. Damascus said the raid, which has made its ties with Washington even icier, killed eight civilians.

Syria sent letters of protest to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the U.N. Security Council demanding action to prevent a repeat of the incident. The council never took up the issue, but Ja'afari said non-aligned countries condemned it.

The Syrian envoy did not directly address U.S. accusations that Syria was a gateway for foreign insurgents but he spoke at length about the October 26 raid.

He said the United States had sent a message to Syria via Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, who visited Damascus this week, that included a promise there would be no such attacks in the future.

"He handed over to us an American promise that this aggression will not be repeated," he said. "That means that the American side acknowledged that act of aggression."

Asked about that statement, a U.S. official said: "The comments reflect diplomatic discussion between the governments of Syria and Iraq. We are not a party to these discussions."

Iraq's U.N. mission had no immediate comment. But the official Syrian news agency reported on Wednesday that Zebari gave Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a letter from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki assuring Assad that any pact Iraq signed with the United States would not harm Syria's security.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)