DAMASCUS, 29 October 2005 — Syrian President Bashar Assad yesterday held talks with his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, on developments in Syria and Lebanon, the state-run Syrian Television announced.

Mubarak’s surprise visit to Syria came as US President George W. Bush assailed Syria and Iran as terrorism patrons and Lebanon’s Hezbollah trashed the UN report on Hariri murder and pledged full support to Syrians.

Mubarak and Bashar held two meetings. “President Assad reiterated Syria’s readiness and commitment to continue cooperating with the international commission of inquiry,” the SANA news agency reported after the talks.

They also discussed the “negotiations under way at the UN Security Council following the publication of the report of investigating magistrate Detlev Mehlis,” SANA said.

In an interim report, Mehlis accused Syria of insufficient cooperation with his investigation and detailed evidence implicating senior officials in Damascus over the Feb. 14 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

In Norfolk, Virginia, Bush said the United States would “deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw regimes.”

“State sponsors like Syria and Iran have a long history of collaboration with terrorists — and they deserve no patience from the victims of terror,” the president said.

“The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and those who support and harbor them — because they are equally guilty of murder,” he said.

In remarks published yesterday, an official said Syria would not arrest top security agents implicated by the UN report in the murder of Hariri unless there was serious proof of their involvement.

“It is impossible to put in prison the head of the security service, who is one of the top officials in our country, just because Mehlis wants to jail him,” said Riad Al-Doudi, legal adviser to the Syrian Foreign Ministry.

Hezbollah said it would stand by Syria. Tens of thousands of Lebanese attended an anti-Israel Hezbollah parade in Beirut’s southern suburb in a show of force by the group facing US-led pressure to disarm in line with a 14-month-old UN resolution.

“We say clearly that we stand by Syria, leadership and people, in the face of its targeting by the Americans and Zionists and attempts to punish it politically for standing by Lebanon and its resistance,” Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah told the rally.

The UN Security Council yesterday mulled an amended Franco-US draft resolution demanding full cooperation from Damascus with the Mehlis probe. Experts met early yesterday to fine-tune the revised resolution which still threatened Damascus with economic and diplomatic sanctions if it did not fully cooperate with the probe.

But the amended text toned down some of the language and certain punitive measures, the implementation of which would now be overseen by a special committee.