DAMASCUS, April 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - In response to U.S. incessant allegations that it possesses chemical weapons, Damascus said Wednesday, April 16, it would submit a resolution to the UN Security Council calling for the Middle East to be free of weapons of mass destruction.

"Damascus would very soon submit a draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council calling for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction," Bussaina Shaaban, director of the ministry's information department, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"If the United States and others are worried about mass destruction weapons, chemical, nuclear or biological, passing into the hands of terrorists we would like this to be materialized by a draft resolution," said Mrs. Shaaban, whose country holds a rotating seat in the UNSC and is the only Arab member in the council.

"Syria has got the approval of the Arab group in the UN and it will submit it to the Security Council very soon, to make the Middle East a zone free of all mass destruction weapons," she added.

Shaaban accused Israel, widely believed to have nuclear weapons, of launching a campaign "in order to harm Syrian-U.S. relations."

Meanwhile, Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou told Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara by phone Wednesday that "nobody believes Syria has weapons of mass destruction on its territory."

Papandreou, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, added that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had assured him "there were no belligerent U.S. plans against Syria," the official SANA new agency reported.

The two also agreed that U.S. threats against Syria were "raising tension in the region and undermining the prospect for a just and durable peace," SANA said.

Syria's decision to submit the resolution was likely a bid to bring pressure on Israel. Syria has complained of U.S. double standards in ignoring "Israel's undeclared stock of nuclear weapons."

"It is Israel which has a big arsenal of weapons of mass destruction," Syria's UN ambassador, Rostom al-Zoubi, told CNN Tuesday, April 15.

Meanwhile, Shaaban reiterated rejection of U.S. accusations that it was harbouring members of the Iraqi regime on the run from the U.S.-led forces.

"Allegations of Syria providing refuge to some symbols of the Iraqi regime are absolutely groundless," she said.

"Syria never had good relations with the Iraqi regime, and in fact there were many operations done against our citizens by the Iraqi regime in the past, and so these kinds of allegations are absolutely groundless," she added, in a reference to the series of attacks in Syria in the 1980s blamed on Baghdad.

Damascus had been backing Tehran in the vicious 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war that left more than one million people dead.

In response to Bush's call on Sunday, April 13, that Syria "must cooperate" with Washington and not give refuge to members to he Iraqi regime, Shaaban said the Iraq-Syria border was closed "except for medical help that is done through the Red Cross."