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Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (photo: Flash90)
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| By Israel Insider staff September 18, 2007 |
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According to Israeli academics, a senior US official said that the US is opposed to Syria attending the Mideast peace summit this fall and used unusually harsh language to describe the Syrian regime, local newspapers reported. But Israel's Prime Minister is feeling all warm and fuzzy about President-for-life Bashar Assad.
"This (Syria) is a vicious brutal regime allied to Iran strategically, not tactically, engaged in helping kill Americans in Iraq, helping the worst Palestinian terrorist forces, desperate to reassert its rule over Lebanon, and sponsoring not simply anti-Zionist but the most barbaric anti-Semitic views," the official said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had only praise for Syrian President Bashar Assad. "I have a lot of respect for the Syrian leader and for Syrian policy. They have internal problems, but we have no reason to rule out dialogue with Syria," Haaretz quoted Olmert as saying in a briefing for Russian-language media outlets in Israel just 11 days after the IAF's strike on Syria's reported nuclear facilities.
"As I've said in the past, we want to make peace with everyone," the prime minister continued. "If the conditions ripen, we are ready to make peace with Syria, with no preconditions and no ultimate demands."
Syria has made it clear that it will not enter peace negotiations with Israel unless Israel agrees to cede the Golan Heights.
Even though Olmert has said that he would renew talks with Syria under the right conditions, the American official said that Syria would not alter its approach, and therefore should not be invited to participate in the peace process.
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