Syrian President Bashaar Assad

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, January 12 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Israeli President Moshe Katsav criticized what he called “Syria's rejection” of his invitation Monday, January 12, for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to visit occupied Jerusalem for peace talks.

Earlier Monday, Syrian officials dismissed the Katsav invitation as "not serious" and evading the issue.

"This rejection shows that President Assad is not made of the same stuff as Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat," Katsav told reporters, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Sadat made a groundbreaking visit to Israel in 1977 that paved the way for the signing of the Jewish state's first peace treaty with an Arab country two years later.

The Egyptian President was assassinated in 1981.

"I invite President Assad to come to Jerusalem to seriously negotiate with Israeli leaders on the conditions of a peace accord," Katsav had said on Israeli public radio.

"Mr Assad will be welcome, but there should be no preconditions," he added.

But Damascus dismissed the invitation as "not serious" and a senior official, quoted by the state news agency SANA, charged that Israel was trying to "sidestep" the land-for-peace basis of the Middle East peace process.

"It is not a matter of visits or initiatives. Israel's recent remarks are a bid to sidestep the peace process," said the unnamed official.

"Making peace in line with the (land-for-peace) references of the (1991) Madrid conference and international resolutions is the only way to guarantee security and stability in the Middle East," he added.

"Partial solutions and maneuvers cannot lead to peace in the region," the official said.

Syria's Expatriates Minister Bussaina Shaaban told CNN that Israel must state its willingness to resume negotiations from where they broke off four years ago, according to AFP.

"This is not a serious response" to Assad's call last month for a revival of contacts with Israel, the Minister said, accusing the Israeli President of seeking a "photo opportunity".

In the previous talks with Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, then Israeli Premier Ehud Barak agreed to an almost total withdrawal from the Golan, save for a narrow strip of land bordering the east bank of the Sea of Galilee.

But Damascus rejected the proposal, wanting the return of all of the strategic plateau which Israel seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed in 1981.

Current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said that if talks are renewed they should start again from scratch.

"If they are serious they should say they are prepared to start negotiations from where they broke off," countered Shaaban, a former Foreign Ministry official, reiterating Syria's position.

Assad last month called for a revival of the peace talks which broke down in acrimony in January 2000.