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Syrian President Bashar Assad (file)
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| By Israel Insider staff July 19, 2007 |
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US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said on Wednesday that there is clear evidence of arms smuggling across the Syrian border to terrorist groups. Khalilzad's accusations followed a closed Security Council meeting to discuss progress on the UN resolution that ended last summer's war between Israel and the Iran and Syria-backed Hezbollah.
Khalilzad said that in the meeting the US clearly conveyed their concerns about "the negative role that Syria and Iran are playing and called on them to cease and desist from their negative activities" in Lebanon, according to Ynet.
"We also made it clear that we condemn all efforts to destabilize Lebanon and expressed particular concern with regard to the arms transfers that are taking place particularly across the Syrian border," Khalilzad told reporters after the session.
Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari responded, saying that "We denied it many times and we are still denying it."
However Khalilzad said there was clear evidence of "arms transfers to terrorist groups" inside Lebanon.
"There is evidence of preparations by groups such as Fatah al-Islam, preparations by groups such as PFLP-General Command that is also carrying out some preparations for attacks. There are arms that are coming in for Hezbollah," he said.
Despite evidence that Syria is supporting terrorist groups in Lebanon sworn to Israel's destruction, Science, Sport and Culture Minister Ghaleb Majadele (Labor) on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to respond to Syria's calls for peace. Majadele has requested that Olmert send him to Damascus as a goodwill emissary.
Syrian President Bashar Assad has made overtures for peace that are contingent upon Israel's ceding to Syria the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau that Israel won in the 1967 war.
Majadele called on the prime minister to "make significant and painful territorial concessions, as the late [prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin proposed, for the sake of a diplomatic arrangement that would lead to relations with Syria and to peace and stability in the entire region."
Olmert has indicated that he is ready to give up the Golan. However he says there cannot be peace talks as long as Syria maintains its close ties with Hamas, Hezbollah and other violent anti-Israel groups.
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