http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077413.html
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem
Last update - 18:09 08/04/2009
Syria says willing to renew peace talks with Israel
By The Associated Press
Syria says it's willing to resume indirect peace talks with Israel's new
government as long as the talks focus on an Israeli withdrawal from the entire
Golan Heights to lines that preceded the June 1967 Mideast war.
Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem made the statements Wednesday during a news
conference with Italy's foreign minister. Indirect talks through Turkish
mediation broke off after Israel's Gaza offensive started in December.
The extent of withdrawal is a major issue. Israel has not confirmed it would
pull back to the pre-war lines, which Syria insists on.
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Israel, Moallem said, must also stick by what he said were earlier commitments
that the discussions would not affect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and that
Israel would refrain from attacking Gaza or Lebanon, two places where
anti-Israel militants operate, while the talks were under way.
Earlier this week, Syria's President Bashar Assad vowed that "the day in which
we will be liberated [on the Golan] is at hand - by peace or war."
Assad told the Qatari newspaper A-Sharq in an interview published on Thursday:
"This enemy does not want peace. What is the alternative? The parallel route to
the peace process is resistance. The Israeli will not come by his own will, so
there is no alternative but for him to come from fear."
Last month, Assad told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that Ehud Olmert
agreed to withdraw from all of the Golan Heights during indirect peace talks
with Damascus.
Assad said Israel and Syria were within "touching distance" of clinching a
peace agreement.
Meanwhile, in his first public statements since assuming his post this week,
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was cool to continued peace talks with
Damascus.
"There is no cabinet resolution regarding negotiations with Syria, and we have
already said that we will not agree to withdraw from the Golan Heights,"
Lieberman said. "Peace will only be in exchange for peace
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