DAMASCUS: British Foreign Secretary David Miliband stressed Syria’s importance in bringing stability to the Middle East after talks yesterday with President Bashar Assad.
In the first visit to Syria by a British foreign minister since 2001, the foreign secretary also praised the establishment of diplomatic relations between Syria and neighboring Lebanon.
“Syria has the opportunity to play a constructive role in many aspects of peace in the region,” Miliband said during a joint news conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.
“There have been important constructive steps over the last 18 months ... (not only) in respect of relations with Lebanon but also some other issues,” he said.
Miliband said he had discussed with Assad efforts to forge peace in the Middle East and expressed to him Britain’s satisfaction over Syria’s establishment of ties with Lebanon and Iraq.
Syria and Lebanon formally established diplomatic ties in October for the first time since they both became independent 60 years ago.
The move turned a page in relations between Lebanon and Syria, which dominated its tiny neighbor for nearly three decades until it pulled its troops from Lebanon in April 2005.
The pullout came two months after the murder in Beirut of Lebanon’s former Premier Rafik Hariri, in which Damascus has denied charges of involvement.
Miliband, who arrived on Monday in the Syrian capital, is the first high-level British official to visit Syria since the Hariri murder.
Miliband also called on Syria to keep up the indirect peace talks with Israel that were launched under Turkish mediation in May. “We support the process and we wish good luck to those who are engaged in those discussions.”
On Monday, he told the BBC that Syria “can be a force for stability or it can be a force for instability” in the region.
For his part, Muallem said that Syria wanted “to take advantage of the good ties that the West has with Israel in order to achieve a global peace” in the Middle East.
