SYRIA: Turkish President Abdullah Gul urges Israel to work toward resuming peace talks with Syria

Record ID: 279392

  • Title: SYRIA: Turkish President Abdullah Gul urges Israel to work toward resuming peace talks with Syria
  • Date: 16th May 2009
  • Summary: DAMASCUS, SYRIA (MAY 15, 2009) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TURKISH PRESIDENT ABDULLAH GUL AND SYRIAN PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASSAD SYRIAN HONOUR GUARDS VARIOUS OF ASSAD AND GUL REVIEWING HONOUR GUARDS
  • Embargoed: 31st May 2009 13:00
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  • Reuters ID: LVA3VO5VYEZF9RHC1HIYCVSNOKS1
  • Story Text: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Friday (May 15) that peace negotiations with Israel could resume but did not give a specific date.
    Assad made the statement during a joint news conference with visiting Turkish President Abdullah Gul.
    The Turkish-mediated indirect talks between Syria and Israel were formally suspended during the three-week Israeli offensive on the Gaza strip, which halted in January.
    Assad said the Gaza invasion prevented the talks from moving to a direct phase.

    "When we get an idea we wait for the partner. When the partner comes we can talk about a date to start the peace negotiations," Assad said.
    Gul urged Israel, now led by former opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, to work toward resuming peace talks with Syria and said Ankara was ready to continue its role as a mediator between the two foes.

    "We hope that the Israeli government forgets what it said when it was still in the opposition, then we would act differently towards it. It should stick to the roadmap made during the Annapolis conference, " Gul said.
    Israel's Haaretz daily reported that right-wing Netanyahu told a group of Russian journalists last week that Israel will not withdraw from the Golan Heights because they are of strategic military value.
    Syrian officials have refrained from responding to Netanyahu's remarks.
    They also ignored statements last month by Israel's ultra-nationalist foreign minister that the Jewish state would talk peace with Syria only if it stopped demanding an Israeli commitment to restore the occupied Golan Heights.
    Netanyahu was involved in U.S.-supervised talks between Syria and Israel during his previous term as prime minister in the 1990s.
    The talks, which lasted almost 10 years, collapsed in 2000 when Assad's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, refused an Israeli offer to withdraw from the Golan but keep several hundred meters on the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
    Syria occupied the fertile Golan plateau, which overlooks Damascus and the lake, Israel's main water reservoir, during the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in the 1980s in a move rejected by the United Nations Security Council.
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