DAMASCUS, 13 November 2003 — Syria was split yesterday between defiance and fear after the US Congress approved legislation providing for tough sanctions against Damascus.

“The Senate voted as expected for economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria because of its support for the resistance of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation,” the official news agency SANA said.

It was Syria’s first official reaction to Tuesday’s passage of the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act, which had easily cleared the House of Representatives last month.

The measure, which is expected to be signed into law by President George W. Bush within weeks, alleges Syria has links to militant extremists and is seeking to obtain nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

It gives the White House a range of options for sanctioning Syria, from restricting US exports and business investment to downgrading Washington’s diplomatic representation and imposing travel restrictions on Syrian diplomats in the US.

The bill also bans the exportation of “dual-use” technology, and allows the US government to freeze Syria’s assets in the US and restrict over flight rights for Syrian aircraft inside US airspace.

It calls for Syria to withdraw its 20,000 troops deployed in neighboring Lebanon, which is totally dominated by Damascus.

Syria’s ruling party newspaper, Al-Baath, said yesterday that “those who want any useful dealings with Syria must understand that only dialogue can bear fruit with it,” adding that Damascus was “immune to outside pressure.”

Syria “has no large foreign debt and its food security is assured”, Al-Baath said in shrugging off the threat of sanctions. But a Western diplomat in Damascus commented: “One has the impression that Syria is not being listened to in Washington at all.”

He said it was in Damascus’s interest to demonstrate progress in liberalizing its economy, which has been held up for months, and improving human rights, but warned that Washington’s problems in Iraq would not prevent it launching actions elsewhere.

Diplomatic sources said Britain’s representative in Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, and French President Jacques Chirac’s envoy Maurice Gourdault-Montagne had made this clear in talks Monday and Tuesday respectively with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

SANA indicated yesterday that Damascus was seeking friends elsewhere, saying that progress had been made in Brussels between Syrian and European Union negotiators on an association agreement.

Officials on both sides said that the accord, which has been under discussion for five years, should be concluded next month.

Sen. Robert Byrd, a long-serving member of the US Congress and outspoken critic of US military policy in the Middle East, warned that the measure could pave the way for a future invasion of Syria.

Byrd, who voted against the bill, said: “The United States is justified in seeking to apply political and economic pressure on Syria to change its foreign policy.”

But he added that sections of the bill “build a case against Syria, and I fear that those provisions could later be used to build a case for a military intervention against Syria.” He pointed to one section that referred to “hostile actions” by Syria against US-led forces in Iraq.

“I have not seen any evidence that would lead me to believe that it is the government of Syria that is responsible for the attacks against our troops in Iraq,” he said.

“Such insinuations can only build the case for military action against Syria, which unfortunately is a very real possibility because of the dangerous doctrine of preemption created by the (Bush) administration.”

A more real threat is that Israel will take advantage of Washington’s hard line to mount a repeat of its Oct. 5 air raid on Syrian territory — its first in some three decades — which it said was aimed at a Palestinian training base but which Damascus said hit a civilian area.