BAIT-UL-MOQADDAS Israel's only Arab minister has said Israel and the United States taped a telephone conversation in which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad praised the leader of Lebanon's Hizbollah movement over the kidnapping last year of three Israeli soldiers, AFP reported.

"The telephone conversation in which Bashar al-Assad congratulated (Hizbollah Secretary General) Hassan Nasrallah for the abduction of three soldiers was taped by Israel and the United States," said Salah Tarif, a minister without portfolio in the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"If Syria wants to fight Israel it should open a front on the Golan and not use Lebanon," Tarif was quoted in the Friday edition of Nazareth-based Arab newspaper *** Al-Sennara*** as saying.

He did not say when the conversation was taped.

The Shiite Muslim Hizbollah on October 7 kidnapped three soldiers in the still-occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms area. Their fate is still unknown.

Israel raided a Syrian military position in Lebanon early Monday, in an attack Damascus said left one soldier dead and four injured.