JERUSALEM, 25 May 2007 — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been considering reviving long-stalled peace talks with Syria, an Israeli newspaper said yesterday.
Olmert’s staff declined official comment. One Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister believed Syria was not ready to make peace.
Maariv daily said Olmert had “completed preparatory examinations regarding the opening of negotiations between Israel and Syria and is leaning toward moving on the Syrian track.”
He is now “convinced that negotiations with Syria and a possible peace treaty between the countries would substantially improve the strategic situation in the region,” the paper’s chief diplomatic correspondent, Ben Caspit, wrote.
Several foreign intermediaries have relayed questions from Olmert to the Syrians as part of a “discreet and in-depth examination of the issue,” the newspaper added. Discreet mediation efforts have taken place in the last three years, though with little movement on the part of either government so far, figures involved in such talks have said.
Peace talks between Israel and Syria, brokered by the United States, broke off in 2000 in a dispute over how far Israel would withdraw from the Golan Heights, captured in 1967, and whether Syria would fully normalize ties with Israel in return.
The Israeli official said yesterday that progress toward new negotiations with Syria had been limited at best, saying Olmert “still sees the present Syrian government as not yet ready for the hard choices needed to make peace.”
Olmert has demanded Damascus cease supporting Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and Palestinian militant groups as a condition of resuming peace talks, dismissing Syrian overtures as a bid to improve ties with the West.
But a bloody power struggle between Fatah and Hamas and Iran’s development of nuclear technology have persuaded Olmert that negotiations with Syria may be Israel’s best option for diplomatic improvements in its security, Caspit wrote.
He said Israel also hopes talks with Syria, which has good relations with Iran, would help it hamper Tehran’s nuclear efforts, which the West suspects are aimed at producing weapons. Tehran insists it is interested in nuclear energy alone.
