DAMASCUS, June 10 (AFP) - President Bashar al-Assad consolidated his power base and the Baath party pledged timid reform measures, as Syria came under renewed international pressure over its alleged meddling in Lebanon.

The 1,231 Arab nationalist Baath party members unanimously re-elected Assad to head the party that has governed Syria since 1963, as a four-day congress wound up late Thursday.

Members of the old guard stepped down, making way for figures close to the 39-year-old Syrian leader in a slimmed-down national command comprising 14 instead of 21 ministers, including one woman for the first time.

The congress recommended moves to "revise the emergency law and limit its application to crimes that threaten state security," Bussaina Shaaban, Syria's emigrants' minister, told a news conference.

Under the law which has been in effect for more than four decades, security services are given sweeping powers, opposition gatherings are banned and the media are controlled.

The congress also recommended a law to allow other political parties, but said they could not be based on ethnic, religious or regional lines, ruling out already banned groups as the Muslim Brotherhood and Kurdish parties.

However, calls for mild liberalisation and dialogue with the European Union and the United States were met Friday by a report claiming Washington had "credible information" that Syrian agents were plotting to assassinate opposition leaders in neighboring Lebanon.

The New York Times reported that a senior US administration official received information from "a variety of Lebanese sources" that Syrian operatives plan to try to assassinate senior Lebanese politicians and that Syrian military intelligence forces are returning to Lebanon to create "an
environment of intimidation."

Leading Lebanese opposition figure Walid Jumblatt in a television interview Thursday night also alleged that Syrian intelligence agents remain in Lebanon despite assurances they have left.

Jumblatt's comments came one week after the latest political killing -- the death of prominent anti-Syrian journalist Samir Kassir.

Lebanon's pro-Syrian regime and its political masters in Damascus have denied widespread allegations of being behind Kassir's death and the assassination of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri in February, as well as a series of bombings since Hariri's death that have killed three others.

One banned opposition leader called the Baath party congress "a last chance to change or be changed" by foreign powers.

"The congress did not make a great leap forward," said pro-reform Baath party member Ayman Abdel Nur, making reference to Assad's earlier hopes of a "great leap forward" at the congress.

Nur added the most significant changes were the old guard retirements, with Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam and former defence minister Mustapha Tlass among the veterans making their exit.

Sources close to Syrian political circles said Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara, whose approach to Lebanon was criticised by party members during the forum, would lose his ministerial post although he stays in the party command.

In a bid to "separate the party from the state," the party said ministers may no longer hold dual roles, with the exception of the president who will continue serving as party leader and the prime minister who also serves as assembly speaker.

The party pledged to consider allowing independent media outlets and examine elements of the constitution that call for a "socialist economy" in Syria, but did not amend Article 8 of the constitution which describes the Baath party as the "leader of society and state."

"People expected much more than this," Tayeb Tizini, a board member of the Syrian Organisation for Human Rights, told AFP.

"It marked a positive step but an insufficient one because the situation in Syria demands much more than these half-measures," he said.

In another sign of increasing external pressure on Syria, the US Treasury Department on Thursday announced it was freezing the assets of a Damascus-based company and of two senior Syrian officials, accused of providing military equipment to the regime of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein.

In New York, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Thursday he may send a verification team back to Lebanon following reports that elements of Syrian intelligence agencies may not have pulled out as claimed.

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