SYRIA - March 2 - Missing Nazi's Presence Denied.

The Damascus authorities deny that Austrian-born Nazi SS officer Alois Brunner is hiding in Syria. Now Brunner, one of the Nazis' most zealous murderers, is standing trial in absentia in Paris for sending 340 Jewish children to Auschwitz on the last convoy to leave France for the World War II death camps. He was deputy to the Gestapo "technician of death" Adolf Eichmann. He would be 88 years old if alive. Nazi hunters believe he is in hiding in Syria. Serge Klarsfeld, the French Nazi hunter who started court action against Brunner in 1987, feels the trial for crimes against humanity is above all symbolic. He says: "Brunner is the ghost of a criminal. There is no hope of seeing him return to France. What counts is the victims. We have kept this case alive for them".