DAMASCUS, 25 November 2004 — Syrian President Bashar Assad is willing to resume peace talks with Israel “without conditions”, United Nations special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said yesterday.
“President Assad has reiterated to me today that he has an outstretched hand to his Israeli counterparts and that he is willing to go to the table without conditions,” Roed-Larsen told reporters after meeting Bashar in Damascus.
Asked to elaborate, Roed-Larsen said: “I cannot speak on behalf of the president of Syria...I am just conveying the basic message that I received from the president this morning.”
“This has been the longstanding position of the president of Syria and it was reiterated to me today.”
Talks broke down in 2000 largely over the issue of control over a sliver of Israeli-occupied land along the Sea of Galilee. Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in September said it would be “very dangerous” for Israel to resume the talks from that point.
It was not clear whether Bashar’s remarks signaled a change in Syria’s position that it wanted to resume the talks where they had broken off.
Syria’s official news agency reported the meeting between Bashar and Roed-Larsen without referring to Assad’s offer.
Commenting on Assad’s reported remarks, a senior Israeli official said Damascus has to crack down on militants before the Jewish state can take its offer seriously.
“It is not enough to make declarations. They have to take some concrete steps to stop terrorist activity against Israel,” the Israeli official said.
In September, Sharon rejected international efforts to revive the talks and said Syria had to crack down on anti-Israel Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups before the talks can be resumed.
Syria says its support of groups such as Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Lebanon’s Hizbollah, which it sees as freedom fighters, is merely political.
Palestinian activists say factions with offices in Syria had decided to close to avoid embarrassing their hosts in view of the increased US pressure.
Syria’s support for these factions that the United States and Israel describe as terrorist groups was one of the main reasons behind the imposition of US economic sanctions against Damascus earlier this year.
Damascus has long insisted that talks should take into account the outcome of the negotiations that broke down in 2000.
At that time Israel had agreed to cede parts of the strategic Golan Heights, captured by the Jewish State in 1967.
But Sharon who took office after the talks collapsed has often said his government will not accept any conditions for revival of the US-sponsored talks. Resuming the talks from the point they stopped would mean that Israel agrees to return the Heights to Syria even before the two sides start negotiations.
Syria’s official stance has for years been that any peace talks should be based on the initiative of the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference terms of reference and UN resolutions requiring Israel to withdraw from all occupied Arab land seized since the 1967 Middle East war.
