Syria has rejected US and European calls for President Bashar Assad to step down, saying they revealed the "face of the conspiracy" targeting Damascus for its key role in the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
A front-page editorial in the government-owned newspaper Al-Thawra, was the first official government response to Thursday's demand by the US and its European allies that Assad resign because of the government's bloody crackdown on protesters.
Assad has come under mounting criticism for his assault on a five-month-old uprising. Human rights groups and witnesses accuse Syrian troops of firing on largely unarmed protesters and say more than 2,000 people have been killed since mid-March.
Activists have raised the death toll from Friday's protests to at least 29, most of them in the central province of Homs where security forces are said to be conducting raids in some neighbourhoods.
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