U.S. freezes assets of Syrian ministers

The Bush administration has frozen the financial assets of Syria's interior minister Ghazi Kanaan and its chief of military intelligence for Lebanon Rustam Ghazali.

The U.S. also banned Americans from doing business with both men.

The power for the U.S. Treasury Department to take the action against the Syrian ministers stems from a May executive order by the U.S. President George W. Bush to extend the economic sanctions imposed on Syria last year for another year.

Freezing the assets of the two Syrians were the first under that order, said Treasury Department spokeswoman Molly Millerwise.

Washington claims that Kanaan and Ghazali played a key role in directing Syria's military presence in Lebanon.

Syria pulled out all its forces from Lebanon in May. The withdrawal came under international pressure following the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq al-Hariri.

Before becoming interior minister, Kanaan served as the head of Syria's military intelligence for Lebanon for 20 years, the U.S. Treasury Department said, adding that Ghazali replaced him in late 2002.

The department claims that both men ensured that Syrian military intelligence officers remained "deeply involved" in Lebanese political and economic affairs, and that they supported the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, deemed by the U.S. as a "terrorist group".

It also alleged that Ghazali made it known that Syria "was determined to physically harm anyone who interfered with Lebanon's economic situation and caused a crisis of confidence."

Syria's official news agency, SANA, cited a government official as saying that the move was part of a U.S. attempt to step up pressure on Damascus in order to draw attention away from recent clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon's southern border.

In another development, a car bomb exploded Friday at a beach resort south of Beirut, wounding one woman, Lebanese security officials said.

Officials said that bomb went off when the woman tried to get in the car, which was parked near the Lebanon Beach Hotel in the suburb of Khaldeh, just south of Beirut.

It wasn’t immediately clear who the woman was or whether she was deliberately targeted.