BEIRUT - The opposition Reform Party of Syria Tuesday hailed its reception in the United States last week, saying the high-profile welcome had invigorated activists already emboldened by weeks of street protests in neighbouring Lebanon.
Thursday's "meeting at the State Department had a galvanising effect on the Syrian community as a whole," the US-based group said.
"They realized that the call for democracy in Syria is a matter that is being taken seriously at the highest levels of the (George W.) Bush administration."
The secular Reform Party, which was set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to make a non-Islamist case for change in Syria, railed against what it dismissed as regime-sponsored factions that had been critical of the Washington meeting.
"Like the majority of Lebanese who are no longer afraid, soon most Syrians will drown the voices of the government-supported opposition."
The group called for a common front among all opposition groups, secular or Islamist.
"Democracy is the common denominator uniting all Syrians, no matter what their political or religious views are," it said.
The 42-year-old Baath party regime in Damascus faced the biggest challenge to its power in the 1980s from the pan-Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.
State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said the discussions had centred on "how can we support the Syrian people's desire for reform, for greater freedoms, for greater opportunity within the system that exists there now."
He dismissed suggestions that the session was part of US contingency planning in the event that the government of President Bashar al-Assad, under heavy pressure for its presence in Lebanon, might collapse.
"This is not where we're going in those discussions," he said.
French President Jacques Chirac warned Bush last month that Assad's government could fall if Syria pulled its 14,000 troops out of Lebanon and allowed free elections there, the Washington Post reported over the weekend.
Street protests in Beirut last month already prompted the resignation of Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister Omar Karameh.
Aides to the premier announced Tuesday that he was abandoning a fresh attempt to form a government.
03/29/2005 11:29 GMT