"The current American government gives no particular importance to the peace process," Assad told Der Standard in reference to efforts to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians after the war in Syria's neighbor Iraq.

"They sometimes make proposals... but Israel rejects them. Israel does not want peace... and the Americans have no vision," he said in the latest of an increasingly bitter war of words between Washington and Damascus.

Charging that the United States "has lost touch with the world," he said the world's biggest military power was making war instead of helping matters and "when a superpower makes a mistake, the whole world suffers."

By waging war on Iraq, the United States has shown that it really "wants oil and to remodel the entire region," he said.

"It will cause trouble around the entire world, not only here. And it will ruin their own interests, both economic and other," he said.

"We see (anti-war) demonstrations everywhere. They are reactions to their hegemonic aims and this reaction will continue to grow," the Syrian president warned.

US-Syrian relations grew tense after US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday accused Syria of allowing military supplies to transit across its territory into Iraq, and called this a "hostile act."

Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara shot back Monday that he hoped US and British forces would be defeated in Iraq.

"Syria's interest lies in seeing the invaders defeated in Iraq. The US government has led the American people towards catastrophe by setting them off against the entire international community," the foreign minister said in comments in the official al-Baath daily.

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