Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem yesterday said Damascus was ready for regional war and condemned a draft UN resolution seeking to end the violence in Lebanon as merely a recipe for more conflict. “If Israel attacked Syria by any means from the ground or the air, our leadership has ordered the armed forces to reply immediately,” he said, after meeting with pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. Muallem, who was due to participate on Monday in Beirut in an Arab foreign ministers’ meeting on Israel’s devastating 26-day-old offensive on Lebanon, also condemned a UN draft resolution on the conflict in Lebanon. Full Story