The United Nations Security Council is meeting in emergency session to discuss an Israeli air raid inside Syria.
Damascus demanded the meeting, warning that Israel was threatening security in the Middle East with its first attack on Syrian soil in more than 20 years.
Israeli jets targeted what the military said was a Palestinian terrorist camp near the Syrian capital in the early hours of Sunday. Syria insists the site was a civilian zone.
The attack was in retaliation for a devastating suicide bomb on a restaurant in the northern port of Haifa on Saturday, which killed 19 people.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan strongly deplored the Israeli air strike and expressed concern that this could lead to a further escalation of an already tense and difficult situation in the Middle East.
Syria and Israel are long-standing enemies, still technically at war over Israel's occupation and illegal annexation of the Golan Heights.
'Unjustifiable attack'
Going into the meeting in New York, Syrian Ambassador to the UN Faisal Mekdad said his country would table a draft resolution asking the Council to condemn the Israeli attack and to call on Israel to desist from further attacks.
He said he expected a good response from his fellow ambassadors.
"Syria will raise its concerns and position on this brutal attack, this unjustifiable attack," he told reporters.
But Israel's ambassador, Dan Gillerman, expressed "outrage and dismay" at the fact that the Security Council had agreed to hold the meeting at all, particularly as it comes a day after the Haifa bomb and on the eve of the Jewish holy day, Yom Kippur.
"For Syria to call a Security Council meeting is as if Bin Laden had called a Security Council meeting after 9/11," he said, adding that it was the "epitome of double standards".
He would not comment on whether Israel planned further attacks in the region, saying only that "Israel will continue to do whatever necessary to protect the lives of its citizens".
He said he would be "very surprised" if the US would support Syria's resolution, commenting on President George W Bush's condemnation of Syria as part of the "axis of evil".
The US State Department has urged both Syria and Israel "to avoid actions that could lead to an escalation of tension".
On Sunday, Israelis began burying those killed in Saturday's bomb, including three generations of the Zev Aviv family which lost five family members.
Four young children and several Arabs were among the 19 people who died at the seafront restaurant in Haifa. About 50 people were injured in the attack, which wrecked the building.
It was one of the deadliest suicide attacks since the start of the Palestinian intifada three years ago.
Change of policy
Israel said the target of the air-raid was the Ein Saheb camp, 22 kilometres (14 miles) outside Damascus, which it claimed was used by several militant groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Syrian media have described Ein Saheb as a Palestinian refugee camp.
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said the raid "threatens security and peace in the region and internationally, and could aggravate the deteriorating situation in the region".
"Syria has practised the highest level of self-restraint, realising that Israel is trying to create pretexts ... to export its internal crisis to the region," Mr Sharaa said in a letter to the UN.
The BBC's Kim Ghattas in Beirut says that, given Syria's obsolete army, diplomacy is Damascus' safest path.
Israeli Government spokesman Avi Pazner stressed that the air strike was not directed against Syria — but against Islamic Jihad, the group which has claimed responsibility for Saturday's bombing.
But he said every country had to understand that it would be held responsible if it harboured terrorists.
The Israeli raid marks a clear change in policy for Israel, which normally responds to Palestinian suicide attacks by striking against targets in the West Bank and Gaza.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3166388.stmE-mail this article