President Bashar al-Assad renewed a pledge of reforms yesterday, as Syria threatened retaliation if countries recognise an opposition bloc increasingly active on the international scene.

"Syria is taking steps

focused on two main fronts — political reform and the dismantling of armed groups," who seek to destabilise the country, Assad told the visiting Cuban and Venezuelan foreign ministers.

The embattled president said "the Syrian people had welcomed the reforms but that foreign attacks intensified just as the situation in the country began to make progress."

He accused Western powers of having "little interest in reform," seeking instead to "push Syria to pay the price for its stances against foreign schemes hatched outside the region."

"Despite everything, a process of reform is underway," he assured them, stressing that Syria's decisions were "sovereign and not related to foreign instructions."

The foreign ministers of Venezuela and

Cuba headed a delegation of leftist Latin American countries — including Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia — that travelled to Syria to ''showsupport."

The delegates denounced the "political and media campaign being waged against Syria," the state news agency SANAsaid.

The eight-member Latin American bloc's talks aim to "political destabilisation attempts by the United States and its allies," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro saidpriorto the visit.

"We reject all forms of interventionism that the empire is trying to apply as it did in Libya for a violent process of regime change," he said.

Washington has renewed its calls for Assad to step down immediately amid escalating violence against anti-regime protesters that the United Nations says has left nearly3,000 people dead.

Turkey, meanwhile, has kept constant pressure on Damascus by hosting gatherings of Syrian dissidents and repeatedly calling on Assad's regime to introduce reforms.