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Pres. Assad and Pres. Mubarak (AP)
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| By Associated Press November 30, 2004 |
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Syrian President Bashar Assad is ready to restart stalled peace talks with Israel, an Egyptian official said Tuesday after Assad met his Egyptian counterpart.
A U.N. envoy had said last week that Assad had made a similar offer, but the Israelis have been skeptical and Assad has yet to make a public overture. With the possibility of Palestinian-Israeli moving forward following the death of Yasser Arafat -- the Palestinian leader the Israelis and the Americans had shunned -- Syria may risk being sidelined if it does not make its case now.
"Syria expressed its readiness to start direct negotiations with Israel without conditions," Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's spokesman, Maged Abdel Fattah, said. Neither Assad, who later returned to Syria, nor Mubarak spoke to reporters after meeting in this resort.
However, in Damascus, Syria's official news agency quoted Assad as restating Syria's long-standing position that peace talks must resume from the point they broke off in 2000.
Assad told Mubarak that restarting the peace process "will be through building on what had already been achieved and completed in order to reach a just and comprehensive peace which returns full rights," SANA reported.
It said the Assad-Mubarak talks dealt with developments in the region and "current attempts to resume the stalled peace process."
Mubarak often acts as a mediator between Israel and other Arabs, but Abdel Fattah said he had not offered to mediate in the Israeli-Syria impasse. Abdel Fattah said Egypt saw no need for a third party to intervene and that "Israel knows exactly what is needed from it."
On Monday, Palestinian leaders said they would meet Syrian officials in Damascus next week to try to unify the Arab position ahead of possible talks with Israel. The Syrians and Palestinians would have to put their difficult past behind them to coordinate. Arafat regularly clashed with Syrian leaders over strategy in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Syria hosts several hard-line Palestinian groups opposed to Arafat's decision to negotiate with Israel.
Last week, U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen met with Syrian leaders in Damascus and emerged to report that Assad was ready to resume peace talks with Israel "without preconditions." Israelis have questioned whether Assad's offer was sincere, and the Syrian information minister has said his government's position was unchanged: That it is ready to talk only if negotiations resume from where they broke off.
The negotiations were suspended indefinitely in January 2000. Syria wanted assurances that Israel would withdraw from the Golan Heights, captured in 1967, and turn over land extending down to the Sea of Galilee.
Israel refused to make such a pledge and insisted that the issues of security arrangements and normalization be spelled out first.
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