The sanctions "will have no effect on the national economy or the agriculture sector", Agriculture Minister Adel Safar told journalists here.

"But we feel that the pressure being applied by the United States smacks of injustice and double standards being applied" in the Middle East, the minister said.

He charged that Washington was "carrying out Israeli policy in the region".

"The principle of imposing sanctions on Syria is a joke," the speaker of the Syrian parliament, Mahmud al-Abrash, told AFP in Amman on the sidelines of a meeting of his counterparts from Iraq's neighbours.

"We are not in an elementary school for the teacher to come and impose sanctions on an undisciplined student. Syria is a country that has its dignity and respects international legislation," he added.

"We in parliament consider the US action a humiliation and totally rejected."

Abrash accused the United States of constantly putting pressure on Syria, but said that Damascus "will never submit" to Washington's will.

US President George W. Bush imposed the new sanctions on Tuesday, charging Damascus supported terrorism and failed to close its borders to insurgents looking to fight US forces in Iraq.

The sanctions, which come on top of existing US terrorism penalties, include a near-blanket ban on US exports to Syria and the power to freeze Syrian assets in the United States, the White House said.

Except for food and medicine and items intended for certain exempt entities such as the US embassy, foreign diplomatic missions and UN agencies, all US exports to Syria, estimated to be worth 100 million dollars a year, are now banned.

That prohibition is expected to hit US companies, particularly oil firms, working in Syria.

Prime Minister Mohammed Naji Otri said late Tuesday the sanctions were "unjust and unjustified", while adding that they "will not have any affect on Syria."

He called on Washington to "reverse its decision and not provoke problems between the two countries."

In an interview published Wednesday in the Spanish daily El Pais but given before the sanctions were imposed, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accused the United States of being a source of instability in the Middle East and warned that hatred toward Americans was growing in the region.