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| By Israel Insider staff July 10, 2007 |
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"I will be happy if I could make peace with Syria. I do not want to wage war against Syria."
These were the statements of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during an historic interview on Saudi satellite station Al Arabiya, which aired in Israel Monday.
Damascus, however, rejected the prime ministers overtures for peace negotiations, despite Syrian President Bashar Assad's repeated, yet inconsistent, calls for talks, reported Army Radio Tuesday.
"Bashar Assad, you know... I am ready to hold direct negotiations with you, and you also know that it's you who insists on speaking to the Americans. The American president says: 'I don't want to stand between Bashar Assad and Ehud Olmert. If you want to talk, sit down and talk," stated Olmert in his first appearance on a major Arabic news station in more than six years, which aired on Israeli television on Monday.
"I am ready to sit with you and talk about peace, not war," said Olmert.
During the interview, Olmert implied that Assad would be welcome in Jerusalem, saying that he would hold talks in "any place he [Assad] would agree to meet."
Damascus, however, does not believe that Olmert's offers for negotiations are serious, said Syrian parliament member Muhammad Habash, Monday.
Public Security Minister Avi Dichter confirmed on Army Radio that Olmert's offer was "genuine and real." He, however, did not have much confidence in Syria's willingness for talks.
"Bashar Assad apparently has other plans than making peace with Israel. And now we will listen and wait," he said.
Assad has repeatedly called for the renewal of peace negotiations via a third party. Last week an official of the Syrian Foreign Ministry stated that Damascus was ready for talks without preconditions.
Last month Syria claimed that it would work with the US on the situation in Iraq and change current ties to Iran if Israel compromised in peace negotiations.
Israeli-Syrian negotiations broke down in 2000 without reaching a solution for the Golan Heights. Israeli captured the territory in the Six Day War, and annexed it in 1981 - a move not internationally recognized. |
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