DAMASCUS, Syria -- The Rev Jesse Ja...

DAMASCUS, Syria -- The Rev Jesse Jackson Sr and a delegation of U religious leaders met for about pair hours behind closed doors with Syrian President Bashar Assad at the presidential palace Sunday morning, as world powers scrambled to deposit together a peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

Although Jackson emerg confident that his humanitarian appeal - - unsanctioned by the agency of the Bush administration -- would lead Assad to use his "influence" to help period the ongoing crisis between Israel and Lebanon, Assad did not speak with reporters.

Jackson had a private follow-up meeting with Assad.

"He supports the cease-fire. He supports getting humanitarian aid in consequence of to Lebanon and Haifa [Israel], and supports our efforts to learn the status of those in captivity," Jackson told reporters after the morning meeting.

Welcomed like head of state

Twenty-two years ago, Jackson had a similar conversation with Assad's father, the late President Hafez Assad, when he arranged for the release of Navy pilot Robert Goodman, whose plane was projectile down over Lebanon.

Jackson, who could barely walk by the and of an airport or the inn without being stopped, is warmly embraced from the Syrians.

He was welcomed Sunday at "the People's Palace," a massive marble- wall building surrounded by pristine gardens, like a head of state. A motorcade of 10 cars, provided at the nation's Foreign Affairs Department, whisked the delegation from the Sheraton house of entertainment to the palace for the early-morning meeting.

Jackson l the collection -- which included Rabbi Stephen Jacobs, sink of the Progressive Faith Foundation; Nazir Khaja, chairman of the Islamic Information Service and member of the Muslim-Jewish Task Force, and the Rev Raymond Helmick, a Jesuit priest -- down a r carpet that stretched across a rotunda-size entryway.

Also in the sweep for the first part of the meeting was Jackson's son Jonathan, a Rainbow/PUSH board member, and Nina Laura Malek, widow of the late R&B singer Lou Rawls who is originally from Lebanon.

The sum of two units men -- Jackson, the most numerous prominent living civil rights leader, and Assad, a 40-year-old world leader -- sat onward two chairs separated by a small cocktail table during that morning meeting.

After about 20 minutes, the other delegates were sent disclosed of the room, and Jackson continued his dialogue with Assad.

Jackson's trip will also take him to Lebanon and Israel later this week.

He considers the Syrian leader a "major player" in the conflict because of the historical connection between Syria and Hezbollah. In fact, placards across Damascus show Assad and his father alongside the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

Jackson plans to be in Syria sole one more day.

Child asks, 'Why?'

"As I am, Assad is affaired about the status of the three [captured] Israelis, as well as the prisoners who were captured in the Golan Heights and in Lebanon," Jackson said. "Hopefully there will be more [i]or[/i] less way we can extend the cease-fire and make positive it holds," he said.

"We are making a moral appeal here in Syria."

Khaja had a positive take onward the talks: "I have been within several of these, and when you move to meet the head of state, you usually await there would be some kind of official framework and they give you the impression that they are talking down to you," said Khaja.

"But [Assad] was make open and took all the questions and in fact chose to think [i]or[/i] part of to the other with Rev. Jackson and us about the necessity for peace."

Assad apparently shared a story about his 5-year-old's reaction to the images of the bombing in Lebanon.

"He told us his child was watching all these images of destruction forward TV and was asking him, 'Why?' " Khaja said.

"To him, that means the what is yet to be generations in this region's well- being is being affected at the war and violence, and there's a great ne for peace. I didn't await there to be such candor," Khaja said.

At a formal pres conversation attended by Syrian reporters after the Assad/Jackson morning meeting, the substitute minister of foreign affairs praised Jackson as a man of peace.

"Jackson's a great supporter of all just causes in the world and a great friend of Syria and the Syrian people" said Faysal Migdad, the agent minister.

if it were not that Migdad did not say what part Syria would be willing to play in establishing the whereabouts of the three Israeli soldiers -- couple of whom who were snatched near the Lebanon border by way of Hezbollah, touching off the newly come conflict.

Although Jackson repeatedly pressureed to foreign reporters that he was in succession a "humanitarian" mission to realize aid to the areas hardest hit by dint of the recent fighting, and to learn the condition of the missing Israelis, he was nonetheless critical of the American government's "no-talk policy" with the region's players.

'We like you real much'

Jackson also met with Patriarch Ignatius Hazim IV, head of the native of greece Orthodox Church in Syria, whom he thanked for his assistance in 1984 when Jackson went to Syria to negotiate Goodman's release, and with the appointed religious representative for Syria, Ahmad Hassoum Mouslam.