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By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Syria, seeking to shift world attention from itself to Israel, asked the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to help transform the Middle East into a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction.

Syria denies U.S. charges that it is developing chemical weapons, and accuses Washington of ignoring Israel, which is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons.

A draft resolution introduced by Syria in the 15-nation Security Council would welcome all initiatives aimed at establishing a "a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear weapons," in the Middle East.

The draft calls on the council to take a central role in countering the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the region and calls on all Middle Eastern governments to ratify a series of arms control treaties, including the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.

Israel has signed the convention but never ratified it, while Syria has neither signed nor ratified.

Syria's U.N. ambassador, Mikhail Wehbe, said Syria would ratify it if all other governments in the region did so.

Wehbe introduced the resolution during a closed-door council session after getting a green light the day before from representatives of the Arab group of countries at the United Nations (news - web sites).

The Arab envoys gathered after top U.S. officials accused Syria of developing chemical weapons, giving sanctuary to fleeing Iraqi officials and assisting Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in his effort to defend Iraq (news - web sites) against the U.S. invasion.

Wehbe said it was "very clear to everybody" that the U.S. charges aimed to shift attention from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and "the Israeli killing of the Palestinian people."

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said Washington also wanted all Middle Eastern nations including Israel to get rid of all their weapons of mass destruction.

But he said the most pressing concern for the United States right now was to rid Iraq of all such arms. The United States has yet to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

He said Washington had expressed to the Damascus government its concerns about what he described as Syria's "ongoing weapons of mass destruction programs." Negroponte said that the United States believed that Syria had tried to acquire the materials needed to make chemical weapons.

Council diplomats said it was unclear where the Syrian draft would go from here -- or how fast -- now that it had been introduced.

Council members agreed to consult their governments on the measure and discuss it again at the expert level on Thursday.

Numerous governments have accused Washington of a double standard in threatening to crack down on Syria as well as Iran and North Korea (news - web sites) on the issue of weapons of mass destruction while ignoring Israel, which is believed to have some 200 nuclear warheads.

Israel declines to discuss its nuclear activities.

U.S. officials have said they hoped the example of Iraq's defeat at the hands of the U.S. military would persuade countries such as Syria, Iran and North Korea to give up their ambitions for weapons of mass destruction.

That has led to speculation -- denied by Washington -- that the United States, with hundreds of thousands of troops in neighboring Iraq, might invade Syria next.