ISRAEL has implicitly confirmed it staged an air strike on Syria last week, as President Bashar al-Assad accused the Jewish state of trying to "destabilise" the strife-torn country.
The foreign minister of Damascus ally Iran, meanwhile, said he welcomed Syrian opposition leader Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib's stated readiness to hold talks with representatives of Assad's regime.
Four days after an air raid which Damascus said targeted a military complex near the capital, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak spoke to reporters in Munich but refrained from directly confirming that Israel staged the strike.
Barak told the Munich Security Conference on Sunday it was "another proof that when we say something we mean it".
He added: "We say that we don't think that it should be allowable to bring advanced weapon systems into Lebanon, the Hezbollah from Syria, when Assad falls."
Wednesday's air strike targeted surface-to-air missiles and an adjacent military complex believed to house chemical agents, according to a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Damascus has threatened to retaliate, further fuelling fears of a regional spillover of the country's 22-month conflict, which the UN says has already left more than 60,000 people dead.
Forty-eight hours after the reported strike, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told AFP Washington was increasingly concerned that "chaos" in Syria could allow Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah Shi'ite movement to obtain sophisticated weapons from Damascus.
Ahead of the air raid, Israeli officials cranked up the rhetoric about Syria's arsenal, which includes chemical agents, warning of dire consequences if they end up in the hands of the Iran-allied Hezbollah.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating war in 2006.
In Damascus, Assad on Sunday accused Israel of seeking to "destabilise" Syria, state news agency SANA reported.
The raid "unmasked the true role Israel is playing, in collaboration with foreign enemy forces and their agents on Syrian soil, to destabilise and weaken Syria", he told Saeed Jalili, who heads Iran's Supreme National Security Council.
But key Damascus and Hezbollah backer Tehran also said on Sunday it welcomed opposition chief Khatib's recent overture for talks with regime representatives.
"It's a good step forward," Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said at the Munich Security Conference, where he said he had held a "very good meeting" with Khatib.
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