Syrian President Bashar Assad has awarded former Lebanese prisoner Samir Kuntar the country's highest medal for spending nearly three decades in an Israeli jail.

The Syrian News Agency says Kuntar received the Syrian Order of Merit during a meeting with Assad in Damascus Monday.

Kuntar was the longest-held Lebanese prisoner in Israel. He was imprisoned in 1979 after he was convicted of one of the grisliest attacks in Israeli history - killing a man in front of his four-year-old daughter, and then killing the girl herself by crushing her skull...

The chief UN nuclear inspector has urged caution against prematurely judging Syria's atomic program by reminding diplomats about false US claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, comments released Tuesday show.

The bluntness of remarks by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, reflected tensions over whether Syria should be given potentially sensitive nuclear guidance at a time it is being investigated for alleged secret atomic activities.

Speaking at a closed meeting of the IAEA's board on Monday, ElBaradei did not mention the United States by name. But his reference to claims that Saddam had a secret chemical, nuclear and biological weapons program - assertions that helped form the US rationale for the invasion of Iraq - made it clear that his criticism was directed mostly at Washington.

"There are claims against Iraq, which proved to be bonkers, but only after a terrible war," ElBaradei said after the US and its allies questioned Syria's right to his agency's help in planning a power-producing atomic reactor.

"There is one thing called investigation, another called clear-cut proof of innocence or guilt ... and all of you, even if you are not lawyers, know that people and countries are innocent until proven guilty," he said...