WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has embarked on an effort to build strong international pressure on Syria despite warnings from some Arab leaders and Israelis that doing so could lead to a chaotic collapse or even the rise of a fundamentalist Islamic regime in Damascus, U.S. officials say.
American diplomats have been trying to enlist other nations to pressure Syrian President Bashar Assad as the United Nations weighs how to respond to an investigator's report implicating top Syrian officials in the February assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Foreign ministers of U.N. Security Council member countries are to meet today to consider a resolution that would press Syria to cooperate more fully in the investigation.
The Bush administration has increasingly focused on Syria as a central obstacle to its goals in the region, and wants to use outrage over the assassination to force Damascus to halt the flow of insurgents into Iraq, loosen its grip on neighboring Lebanon and end its support of Islamic militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
But some Arab leaders and other allies say the Syrian government is already fragile and isolated. They have warned that international sanctions or other measures could topple the regime, destabilizing an important corner of the Middle East and possibly opening the way for Islamist groups such as the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
The outlawed organization, which is alleged by some to have ties to Al Qaeda, has been badly weakened by Assad's government and that of his long-ruling father, Hafez Assad. However, it still is widely considered to have the broadest base of support of any Syrian opposition group.
Some Israeli officials have been quoted in Jerusalem recently as privately warning that Assad's fall could stir chaos on Israel's northern border and hand power to the Muslim Brotherhood.
A senior administration official acknowledged the risk, and that U.S. officials had found no preferable successor. Nevertheless, he said that in meetings of top U.S. officials, "no one is arguing that we shouldn't push them too hard. Quite the opposite."
The official, who declined to be identified because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue, suggested that the United States might be able to work with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood's organizations are mainstream in some countries, he said, though extreme in others.
