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24 May 2009 Syria will not resume peace talks
with Israel unless the Jewish state is committed to
withdrawing from the occupied Golan Heights, the
Syrian foreign minister has said.
Walid al-Moualem was responding on Friday to an offer
by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who
two days earlier said that he was ready to resume the
talks with Syria immediately but indicated that he
would not make any commitments on land first.
"If Israel does not honour these requirements then
there is no point of conducting useless negotiations,"
Moualem said.
"Negotiations will be futile if there is no true
Israeli will to make peace and no US involvement. We
will not go back to wasting time," he told Syrian
state television.
Indirect talks between Syria and Israel, which were
being mediated by Turkey, were formally suspended in
December during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza
Strip.
Last week, Abdullah Gul, the Turkish president, said
Ankara was ready to continue as a mediator. Diplomats
in Damascus, the Syrian capital, said Gul has been
urging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Netanyahu
to resume the talks.
Assad said the Turkish-mediated talks had stopped just
as Syria was waiting for an Israeli response to
Damascus's definition of what constitutes the Golan
boundary, which would have set the benchmark for any
Israeli withdrawal.
Israeli occupied the Golan, a fertile plateau
overlooking Damascus and the Sea of Galilee, in the
1967 Middle East War.
Syria says the occupied Golan was territory Syria held
on June 4, 1967, before the war broke out, including
the northeastern shore of the lake, Israel's main
water reservoir.
The two sides held almost 10 years of US-supervised
talks that collapsed in 2000 when the late Syrian
President Hafez al-Assad, father of the current
president Bashar, refused an Israeli offer to pull out
of the Golan but keep several hundred metres on the
northeastern shore of the lake.-- Agencies
Moallem Dismisses Der Spiegel Report
as Insignificant
Syrian Foreign
Minister Walid al-Moallem dismissed on Monday as
"lies" the report published by German magazine Der
Spiegel concerning an alleged "involvement" of
Hezbollah in the assassination of former Prime
Minister Rafiq Hariri.
"I invite the prosecutor to use his prerogatives
concerning these lies which undermine the
international investigation," Moallem told a news
conference.
The Syrian FM described the report as "insignificant"
and urged Der Spiegel to probe "who wrote the article
and who is behind it."
Meanwhile, Moallem said that Syria would only resume
peace negotiations with Israel on the basis of a full
return of the Golan Heights.
"Syria will resume negotiations on the basis of
international principles and points of reference, and
the total liberation of the Golan to the June 4, 1967
line," he said. "Otherwise there won't be any
negotiations."
"The negotiations must lead to results. We will not
resume negotiations that are not fruitful."
EsinIslam.Com
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