VARIOUS: ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER ARIEL SHARON SAYS HE IS READY FOR PEACE TALKS WITH SYRIA BUT ONLY IF DAMASCUS STOPS SUPPORTING MILITANTS

Record ID: 400304

  • Title: VARIOUS: ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER ARIEL SHARON SAYS HE IS READY FOR PEACE TALKS WITH SYRIA BUT ONLY IF DAMASCUS STOPS SUPPORTING MILITANTS
  • Date: 13th January 2004
  • Summary: (W7) JERUSALEM (JANUARY 11, 2004) (REUTERS) 1. MV ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER ARIEL SHARON ENTERING PRESS CONFERENCE WITH FOREIGN JOURNALISTS; WIDE OF PRESS CONFERENCE 0.24 2. (SOUNDBITE) (English) SHARON SAYING "Syria should stop the help and support of terror organisations and if that will happen I believe Israel will be very glad to negotiate. It sho
  • Embargoed: 28th January 2004 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: JERUSALEM/TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
  • City:
  • Country: Israel
  • Reuters ID: LVACVJXHYU07ANA4V3NI3BZD6K1S
  • Story Text: Sharon says Syria must end backing militants,
    pro-settlement rally draws thousands.

    Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he is
    ready for peace talks with Syria, but only if Damascus
    stops supporting militants.

    "Syria should stop the help and support of terror
    organisations and if that will happen I believe Israel will
    be very glad to negotiate. It should be without
    preconditions," Sharon told foreign journalists at a press
    conference on Sunday (January 11).

    Negotiations between the two countries, technically
    still at war, collapsed in 2000, but Syria has recently
    urged the United States to help revive them.

    Sharon said that despite Syria's peace overtures, it
    continued to help Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah.

    Israeli military sources say Syria or its Hizbollah
    allies have a hand in nearly all Palestinian militant
    attacks on Israelis and that Syria is determined to scupper
    any attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
    peacefully.

    Syria rejects the accusations that it backs acts of
    terror, saying the presence in Damascus of representatives
    from militant groups sworn to Israel's destruction is just
    to run information offices.

    Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Israeli right-wingers
    rallied in Tel Aviv against a plan of Sharon, their
    champion for decades, that could spell the end for some
    Jewish settlements.

    It was the largest show of force by the pro-settler
    movement since Sharon said late last year that Israel would
    act alone to separate from the Palestinians if peace
    efforts fail under a plan that would also mean uprooting
    some settlements.

    On Sunday, he repeated the comment to the foreign
    correspondents.

    "When Israel will have to, I will say follow the Road
    Map, Israel will not be able to hold all the Jewish
    communities. It's very clear. And even if we will not
    succeed, though I can assure you that we will make every
    effort to implement the Road Map, but if we will not
    succeed and we will have to take unilateral steps of
    disengagement, no doubt that there will be some relocation
    of Jewish communities," he told them.

    The plan has also drawn Palestinian ire and concern
    from the United States.

    A mood of betrayal hung heavily over the rally in Tel
    Aviv's Yitzhak Rabin Square, named after the left-wing
    prime minister shot dead there in 1995 by a Jewish
    extremist opposed to his interim peace deals with the
    Palestinians.

    The Road Map has been thrown into doubt by violence and
    the failure of either side to take promised steps for peace.

    Sharon is threatening a selective pullback along the
    line of a barrier going up in the West Bank but looping
    around the biggest settlement blocs.

    "I came this night, I came here with my children to say
    Ofra is my home. It's my homeland and we are going to stay
    forever. We are not going to let anybody to take us from
    our houses and to lose this part of the land of Israel,"
    said Eviatar Cohen, from the West Bank settlement of Ofra.

    Palestinians fear the barrier would splinter the state
    they seek and called on Sunday for international help to
    stop it.


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