DAMASCUS/RAMALLAH: A fifth round of Turkish-brokered peace talks between Syria and Israel this week has been postponed at Israel’s request, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said yesterday. “It has been postponed at the request of the Israeli side,” Muallem told a press conference with visiting Spanish counterpart Miguel Angel Moratinos.
The next round of talks between the two neighbors — which have technically been at war for 60 years — was due to be held today. “When Israel is ready to resume the talks, we will be too because we want to build a solid base that will allow the launch of direct negotiations whatever the outcome of the Kadima party election in Israel,” Muallem added.
He was referring to the party of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, which was voting for a new leader yesterday after the premier announced he was stepping down to fight corruption and influence-peddling allegations. Turkey, which has been acting as mediator in the talks, confirmed that today’s planned meeting had been canceled at Israel’s request.
Israel said it failed to complete the formalities that would allow its chief negotiator, Yoram Turbowicz, to remain on the negotiating team after he resigned from his post as Olmert’s general secretary, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office said.
“The Israeli side has emphasized that it is ready to resume the talks as soon as this technical and legal process is completed,” it said, adding that a new date for the fifth round had not yet been fixed. Israel and Syria launched indirect negotiations brokered by Turkey in May, eight years after talks were frozen over the fate of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Syria has said that ultimately only Washington has the clout to sponsor direct talks, although it has been keen to win greater international support for the process.
“Syria has always called for a European role in the peace process equal to the US one, as Europe is nearer to our region and has an interest in its security and stability,” Muallem said. “We discussed with Moratinos a scenario for ... the direct negotiations in order to show that the international community is interested in sponsoring a just and comprehensive peace on all tracks.”
Moratinos said the European Union was keen to do what it could to help advance the process. “One of the most important changes I can see in the Middle East is that the countries in the region itself are taking their own responsibilities,” he said, hailing Turkey’s role in brokering the indirect preparatory talks between the two sides.
Asked whether Madrid, which hosted the 1991 conference that launched the Middle East peace process, was ready to host a new conference to relaunch it, Moratinos said: “Spain is always ready to welcome any peace conference. “But let things go step by step now the different tracks move steadily and seriously and then the parties and the international community will decide if they want to have a comprehensive peace conference.”
Meanwhile, the destruction of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor last year was the result of an intelligence collaboration that included a “foreign partner” who first identified the facility’s purpose, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said on Tuesday.
The reactor at the desert outpost of Al-Kibar was flattened in an airstrike on Sept. 6, 2007, that senior US intelligence officials have said was carried out by Israel on its own initiative. “Our foreign partnerships ... were critical to the final outcome,” Hayden said in a speech for delivery to the World Affairs Council of Los Angeles.
A US intelligence official declined to specify the partner Hayden referred to or to say whether it was Israel. He said there have been no signs that Syria was trying to replace the destroyed reactor. Israel has never given an account of the strike or formally confirmed that it took place and some Israeli officials have quietly voiced dismay at US disclosures about the strike.
