Israel's president on Monday invited Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad to Jerusalem for negotiations with Israeli leaders,
but Damascus dismissed the offer as a "media maneuver."
Although Moshe Katsav has largely only ceremonial powers, his surprise appeal
added to pressure within Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government for
the right-wing leader to respond favorably to Assad's recent call to resume
peace talks broken off in 2000.
Israel's president on January 12, 2004
invited Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to visit Jerusalem for
negotiations with Israeli leaders, but Damascus rejected the offer as 'not
serious.' Al-Assad arrives for a meeting with Turkish businessmen in
Istanbul on Jan. 8. [Reuters]
"I invite the president of Syria to come to Jerusalem and meet with the heads
of the state and hold serious negotiations," Katsav said on Israel Radio.
Syria rejected the invitation -- opening the way for Israel to claim the
diplomatic high ground. Syria called the invitation a diversion. Buthayna
Shaaban, a Syrian government minister, said the offer "is not serious."
"All the smoke is only like a media balloon trying to draw attention away
from real facts on the ground," Shaaban said in Damascus.
"What the Israelis are doing on the ground is building more settlements,
occupying more territories [in the Golan Heights], doubling the number of
settlers and then talking about visits," he said. "This is not serious. This is
not serious talk at all."
"Partial solutions and media maneuvers do not achieve peace in the
region...Syria's longstanding position is to resume negotiations from where they
stopped," the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said.
The previous negotiations ended without an agreement on the future of the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Israel's biggest
reservoir.
But officials have said the two sides, still technically at war, were divided
only over the issue of control of a narrow strip of land at water's edge. Israel
was ruled by a center-left government at the time.
Sharon did not mention the invite to Syria in a later televised speech to
parliament.
He was obliged to appear in parliament to outline his political plans after
the opposition collected enough signatures calling for him to do so. He was
expected to primarily speak about the conflict with the Palestinians, but the
opposition also quizzed him over Syria.
Yossi Alpher, an Israeli strategic analyst, told Reuters: "He really didn't
say anything substantive...clearly on the Syrian issue he is trying to evade any
serious discussion."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon listens
to an opposition Labor Party member criticize his policies, flanked by
Sharon's Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, left, and Minister of Finance
Benjamin Netanyahu, during a session of the Knesset, the Israeli
Parliament, in Jerusalem, Monday, Jan. 12, 2004.
[AP]
Agreement to resume the talks at the point at which they were suspended would
effectively force Sharon to agree in advance to a pullout from almost all of the
Golan Heights.
INTERUPTIONS
Sharon has rejected any preconditions for negotiations and has long opposed
withdrawal from the strategic heights, seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East
war and annexed in 1981 in a move not recognized internationally.
Israel has voiced concern that Syria's peace gestures were an attempt to
improve ties with Washington. But some Israeli politicians said Israel should
negotiate with a Syrian leader they regard as weakened by the U.S. invasion of
Iraq.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, speaking to reporters in
Cairo, said Washington supported "efforts to renew negotiations on the Syrian
and other peace tracks."
Interrupted frequently by heckling from opposition left-wingers during his
speech, Sharon reiterated his promise to impose "security" steps if Palestinians
failed to dismantle militant groups as required by the U.S.-backed peace road
map.
But he did not mention, as he had done in other recent speeches, his
intention to dismantle some Jewish settlements on occupied territory and pull
back to new "security lines" if the road map process collapsed.
Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert earlier told the Jerusalem Post he
estimated Sharon's plan would be implemented in the "second half of this year"
if negotiations with the Palestinians do not resume.
Sharon said he would seek approval for any unilateral steps from the
parliament prior to their implementation.
Sharon's omissions allowed him to avoid direct confrontation -- for now --
with nationalists in his coalition who oppose any territorial pullbacks or
scrapping of settlements. Sharon has said such moves would cost Palestinians
some of the land they seek for a state.
Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat called Sharon's speech "an
indication that the only plan he has is for the continuation of walls,
occupation and settlements."
David Satterfield, a senior U.S. diplomat, pressured Israel on Monday to stop
building settlements and told the Palestinians to rein in militants to revive
peace talks.
