"We expect them to do everything they can to prevent people who should be held to account from escaping in their country," he said after meeting for the first time at two area military hospitals with US soldiers wounded in Iraq.

"And it they are in their country, we expect the Syrian authorities to turn them over to the proper folks," said Bush, who met privately with some 75 hurt soldiers and their families accompanied by First Lady Laura Bush.

"We strongly urge them (Syrian leaders) not to allow for Baath party members, or Saddam's families, or generals on the run, to seek safe haven and find safe haven there," said Bush.

Syria "just needs to know we expect full cooperation," he said.

Syria has told the United States it has closed its border with Iraq to all but humanitarian traffic, US officials said Thursday, as they stepped up warnings to Damascus not to assist the remnants of Saddam's collapsed regime.

"We certainly hope that proves to be true," US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

The US ambassador to Syria, Theodore Khattouf, had been told of the closure in meetings with Syrian officials in Damascus, but stressed that Washington would be watching the border closely to see if the move was enforced, the State Department said.

Boucher said the US military and intelligence agencies would be monitoring the frontier "quite closely," and he repeated warnings issued over the past few days by senior US officials that Syria faced a critical choice in its dealings with Iraq.

"Syria has choice to make and we hope Syria makes the right one," Boucher told reporters.

A senior State Department official said later it was possible that Damascus's definition of "humanitarian traffic" might well be different than Washington's.

Meanwhile, Syria's ambassador to Washington said the accusations amounted to a US-Israeli campaign against Damascus.

Rostom Zohbi told Arab satellite television Al-Jazeera that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had accused Syria on March 28 of sending military aid to Iraq in its war with the US-led coalition, notably night-vision goggles.

"This came as no surprise. On the same day, I read the same accusations in (the Israeli newspaper) Haaretz, just hours before Mr. Rumsfeld made his statement," Zohbi noted.

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