Syria's Christians do not support the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, but they do want stability in their war-torn country, Lebanon's Maronite Christian Patriarch Bishara Rai told AFP on Thursday.

"I tell Westerners who say that we (Christians) are with the Syrian regime that we are not with regimes, we are with the state. There is a big difference," Rai told AFP, a week before the arrival in Lebanon of Pope Benedict XVI.

"In Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was removed, we lost a million Christians," he said at the patriarchal residence in Diman in northwest Lebanon. "Why? Not because the regime fell, but because there was no more authority, there was a vacuum."

The number of Christians in Iraq fell from one million under the regime of Saddam to 4,000 currently, following a wave of deadly attacks by Islamist extremist groups which triggered an exodus of Christians,

"In Syria, it's the same thing, Christians do not back the regime but they are afraid of what may come next, that is their feeling," said Rai.

The Islamist tide in the so-called Arab Spring countries has frightened many Christians, who are a minority in every Middle Eastern country and are concerned for their survival should the multi-religious nature of the region change.

Christians in Syria constitute one of the Middle East's oldest communities, though they number just five percent of a population of 22 million. Ever since the rise to power of the ruling Baath party  led by the Alawite majority ,they have also enjoyed religious freedom.

AFP