1ST LEAD: Israel keeping mum on reported Syria strike

Israel continued Wednesday its policy of absolute silence regarding reports that it carried out an airstrike inside Syria last week, allegedly on an overland arms shipment bound for the Lebanese Hezbollah guerilla movement backed by Syria and Iran. The US Cable News Network (CNN) late Tuesday quoted unnamed "sources in the US government and military" as confirming, after days of complaints by Damascus, that Israel did indeed carry out an airstrike in Syria after midnight on Wednesday last week - the first in four years. The strike may have targeted weapons from Iran earmarked for Hezbollah "coming into Syria or transiting through the country," CNN quoted the sources as saying. "We have no response to reports of this nature," a military spokesman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Wednesday morning. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, also declined to comment when contacted by dpa. Since the Syrian complaints first surfaced last Thursday, Israel has consistently kept silent, with Olmert even instructing his usually voluble ministers not to open their mouths on the issue. In the first indirect comments by any Israeli official, Israeli President Shimon Peres said in interviews given to mark the onset Wednesday night of the Jewish New Year that Israel was adopting a policy of silence to avoid escalating Israeli-Syria tensions. However, in a clear hint, he said there was a strong interest in preventing Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon from intensifying. Syria filed a formal complaint to the United Nations Tuesday, accusing Israel of violating its airspace and dropping "some munitions" without causing human casualties or, it said, property damage. The "aggression," Damascus warned, could lead to uncontrollable "serious consequences." The unconfirmed airstrike would have been the first such Israeli attack on Syria since October 2003. That in itself was the first Israeli attack on Syrian soil in nearly three decades. Retaliating against a deadly suicide bombing in its northern port city of Haifa, Israel at the time bombed what it said was a training base used by the militant Palestinian Islamic Jihad faction north-west of Damascus. According to the US sources quoted by CNN, Thursday's airstrike "left a big hole in the desert" in Syria. They said Israeli ground forces may have been used to direct the strike. They said Israel was satisfied with the success of the operation, and that the US government and military were also happy to have Israel carry the message to both Syria and Iran that they can get in and out and strike when necessary. The New York Times, meanwhile, separately also quoted a US Defence Department official as confirming Israeli jets struck a target in north-eastern Syria last Thursday. It also quoted officials in Washington as saying the most likely target were weapons caches sent by Iran to Hezbollah through Syria. Israel and Hezbollah fought a deadly and destructive month-long war last summer, during which the Shiite militant groups launched nearly 4,000 rockets at northern Israeli towns and villages. UN Security Council resolution 1701, which brought about a ceasefire that ended the war, bans arms shipments to Hezbollah, but Israel and the UN have repeatedly warned that the weapons embargo was not being upheld. The incident has exacerbated fears in Israel of a military flare- up with Syria. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana meanwhile has been exchanging messages between Israel's and Syria's foreign ministers, in a bid to calm the situation. According to the New York Times, Israel is not only concerned about Hezbollah's rearmament, but about the possible supply to Syria of nuclear material by North Korea. It quoted one official in the administration of President George W Bush as saying Israel had therefore recently carried out reconnaissance flights over Syria, taking pictures of possible nuclear installations. "The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left," the official told the paper. dpa ok jab ch pmc