Syria accuses US-led coalition, Iraq of border failures

Introduced to journalists simply as General Amin, the security chief listed measures taken by Damascus. These included increasing the height of a sand wall from two to four metres, boosting the number of border control points from 547 to 557, and erecting three barbed wire barriers. These steps and others had cost 100 million Syrian pounds (two million US dollars).

He said Syrian forces had intercepted "a large number of Syrians" trying to infiltrate Iraq, while 2,500 Iraqis had been handed over to Iraqi or US border guards. Some 1,400 extremists of various nationalities had been handed over either to their embassies or returned to countries sharing borders with Syria.

In addition, Syria carried out routine patrols over some 700 kilometres (450 miles) of the frontier area.

Washington regularly accuses Syria of ignoring infiltration from its territory by militants wanting to enter Iraq to fight coalition troops.

General Amin accused Baghdad and the coalition of failing to fulfill promises they made, particularly during a September meeting in Damascus.

"Following this meeting, a British delegation went to the frontier and promised to supply Syria with specialist control equipment and organise training courses for Syrian frontier guards," he said.

"The meeting also agreed that three joint Syrian-Iraqi-American control points would be set up at the frontier. Unfortunately, none of these promises has been kept."

The general also told journalists that US bombing on Syrian territory had resulted in the deaths of eight Syrians.

Iraqi parties yesterday were officially registering their candidates for the December 15 general elections after each of three main Sunni, Shia and Kurdish communities agreed on separate broad coalitions.

Meanwhile, two US more soldiers were killed as the Pentagon announced that US forces in Iraq have swelled to 161,000, their highest level since the March 2003 invasion.

Iraq's dominant Shia parties, the two main Kurdish factions and three groups representing the minority Sunni community had announced ahead of Friday's registration deadline they would each field single candidate lists for the poll.

The dominant Shia "United Iraqi Alliance will be maintained," according to Jawad Maliki, number two on Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's Dawa list, speaking of the coalition of more than half a dozen factions which won 140 of parliament's 275 seats in the January election.

For their part, the two main Kurdish parties -- the Democratic Kurdistan Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan -- will also present a joint candidate list as they did in January, according to Adnan al-Mufti, president of the Kurdish regional parliament and one of the PUK leaders.

"The Kurds will take part in the next elections putting forward the same joint list as in January which allowed them to win 76 seats" in the national parliament, Mufti said.

He acknowledged however that there had been "some changes to the list" following the withdrawal of the small Islamic Union of Kurdistan faction which will field its own candidates independently.