Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, calling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dangerous and prone to risky mistakes, has urged the United States to turn up the heat on Damascus.
Sharon's fiery comments in a newspaper interview published on Tuesday were accompanied by a surge of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in which three Palestinian gunmen, two Israeli civilians and an Israeli army officer were killed.
The bloodshed, including shootouts in a freight terminal on the Israel-Gaza border and at a hideout used by Hamas militants in the West Bank, cast a new shadow on U.S. hopes of implementing a new plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace following the Iraq war.
"Bashar Assad is dangerous. His judgment is impaired," Sharon told the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, adding his voice to a chorus of U.S. allegations that Syria is harboring Iraqi leaders, developing chemical weapons and supporting terrorism.
"In the Iraq war (Assad) proved he was incapable of drawing conclusions from very obvious facts," Sharon said.
"Anyone with eyes in his head would have known that Iraq was going to be on the losing side. But Assad thought the United States was going to fail."
Syria's cabinet on Tuesday denounced the accusation that it was developing chemical weapons as "threats and falsifications" designed to further Israeli "goals and expansive greed."
Sharon called on the United States to put "heavy pressure" on Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon, to oust Hizbollah guerrillas from southern Lebanon and Palestinian militant groups from Damascus.
The Israeli leader said Assad could also miscalculate when it came to Israel. "He has a force that is under his thumb -- Hizbollah -- and that is dangerous," he added.
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