DAMASCUS - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met Friday in Damascus with the leaders of 10 radical Palestinian movements including Islamic Jihad and Hamas, a Palestinian official said.

Ahmadinejad said he "strongly supports the Palestinian people's struggle" during the meeting, according to Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) official Maher Taher.

Taher said the militant chiefs pledged to Ahmadinejad that the "Palestinian resistance and struggle would continue" against Israel.

Islamic Jihad chief Abdullah Ramadan Shala, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command leader Ahmed Jibril were among those at the meeting, Taher said.

The meeting came one day after Islamic Jihad claimed a suicide attack in Tel Aviv that wounded 19 people. Israel blamed Tehran and Damascus for supporting the attack.

"The attack was financed by Tehran, planned in Syria and carried out by Palestinians," Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was quoted as saying by a ministry official.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad did not attend Ahmadinejad's meeting with the Palestinian chiefs, though he and Ahmadinejad met Thursday in Damascus as the two allies reaffirmed their ties amid increasing international pressure.

In a joint statement issued at the end of Ahmadinejad's visit, Iran and Syria condemned the February 2005 assassination of Lebanon's former premier Rafiq Hariri in which Damascus has been accused of involvement.

"Syria and Iran renew their condemnation of this crime ... and express their insistence on having the international inquiry take place on a professional, judicial and neutral basis," it said.

They also condemned "any attempt to use this hateful crime for political ends so as to pressure Syria".

While Iran faces possible UN sanctions over its nuclear program, Assad's regime is also growing more isolated after a UN probe implicated Syrian intelligence in the killing of Hariri.

The ultra-conservative Iranian president has already faced an international outcry over his comments describing Israel as a "tumor" that should be "wiped off the map."

During his first visit to sole regional ally Syria since his shock election win in June, Ahmadinejad described Israeli Jews as "migrants" and asked if Europeans would be willing to accommodate them.

"Give these migrants authorization to come into your (European) countries and you will see that they no longer want to live in occupied (Palestinian) territory," he said during a meeting with high-ranking Syrian officials.

Before leaving Damascus, he talks with the leaders of Lebanon's pro-Syrian Shiite movement Amal, parliament speaker Nabih Berri, the Lebanese news agency ANI reported.

Their talks focused on "the need to preserve the unity of Lebanon, its sovereignty and to support the Lebanese resistance" against Israel, it said. They called for improved relations between Damascus and Beirut.

It was Berri's first visit to Damascus since Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon last April in the wake of the Hariri murder after a 29-year deployment.

Lebanon's Iranian-backed Shiite movement Hezbollah said its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, also met with Iran's president although it did not specify if they met together with Berri.

Copyright © 1999-2005 Lebanonwire^®.com. All rights reserved.