JERUSALEM – Syria is willing to reopen peace talks with Israel “without conditions,” a United Nations special envoy said yesterday – but Israel dismissed the overture as “nothing new.”
Negotiations between the two enemies were broken off four years ago when Syrian President Hafez Assad rejected as insufficient an Israeli offer to withdraw from virtually all of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 war.
After Assad was succeeded by his son Bashar, Syria offered to reopen talks but only at the point of the last Israeli offer, which Israeli officials now regard as too generous.
But yesterday the U.N.’s Terje Roed-Larsen said in Damascus he had conferred with Bashar Assad, who said “he has an outstretched hand to his Israeli counterparts and that he is willing to go to the table without conditions.”
Roed-Larsen did not elaborate – and a spokesman for Assad insisted Syria’s “permanent position” is that talks must resume “from the point they broke off.”
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said: “The problem is not with Syrian words, it’s Syrian activity.”
Israeli officials said Syria should prove it is interested in reopening a dialogue by cracking down on Palestinian terrorist groups who maintain headquarters in Damascus.
Also yesterday, Israel said it would allow international observers to monitor voting in the West bank and Gaza Strip to elect Yasser Arafat’s successor.
With Post Wire Services