Ahmad says Mubarak’s conveyed the Syrian message to the U.S. and Israel

By Abdul Raheem Ali, IOL Staff 

CAIRO, January 21 (IslamOnline.net) – Syria's President Bashar Assad was ready to re-start peace talks with Israel from scratch but Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon set several preconditions, a veteran Egyptian journalist close to President Hosni Mubarak told IslamOnline.net on Tuesday, January 20.

Makram Mohammad Ahmad, the editor-in-chief of the semi-government Al-Muswar weekly, said Assad had told Mubarak during his latest visit to Cairo in December about his new position, provided that it would lead to a just peace.

Syria had for long insisted on reviving parlays with Israeli from the point at which they broke off three years ago.

Mubarak conveyed the message to U.S. Middle East special envoy William Burns and Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon, said the journalist, adding Sharon did not reciprocate.

Instead, Sharon responded by demanding, inter alia, that Damascus should first stop backing the Lebanese group, Hizbollah, and Palestinian resistance factions.

"Mubarak also renewed calls for Washington-backed Sharon to ease the blockade clamped on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters, but defiant Sharon was adamant that the Palestinian leader should be sidelined," said the journalist.

Convinced that no peace can be thrashed out under Sharon, Ahmad said, Cairo  is stepping up shuttle diplomacy to prove that Sharon is "solely" responsible for the impasse on both the Syrian and the Palestinian tracks.

"Egypt and Saudi Arabia have no doubts now that no peace can be reached while Sharon is in office," added Ahmed, the former chairman of Egypt's Journalists Syndicate.

In early December, Assad told the New York Times he was ready to "resume" negotiations with Israel "where they broke off in 2000".

During previous talks, held under his late father Hafez al-Assad, then Israeli Premier Ehud Barak accepted in principle an Israeli pullout from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967 and annexed in 1981.

Talks broke off after Israel refused to withdrew from a narrow strip of land bordering the eastern bank of the Sea of Galilee.

The area is a grassy plateau overlooking north-eastern Israel and have important water resources - providing Israel with a third of its water needs.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav on January 12 invited Assad to visit occupied Jerusalem to "start" talks on a peace accord, with no preconditions but the Syrians rebuffed the invitation as "not serious".

Divided

But the veteran journalist said the Arab world remains divided over how to deal with Sharon.

"On the one hand, some believe that they can make use of the U.S. limbo in Iraq and [U.S. President George W.] Bush's need to make a breakthrough in the Middle East before the November presidential elections.

"While others have already gave up on peace under Sharon," he said, saying Egypt and Saudi Arabia go for the first.

Ahmad said Egyptian officials are now setting stage for the Bush-Mubarak summit in Washington by the end of March.

The summit will tackle "the agenda of the strategic dialogue" between both countries "which primarily focuses on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, peace in Sudan, Iraq and bilateral relations".

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and Iran, the region's heavyweights, had recently engaged in talks and even historical visits to cement relations.

This, according to several analysts, reflects awareness of a new regional order which is being imposed by the United States. Particularly after the Iraq invasion.

Assad's visit to Turkey – the first by a Syrian head of state – sought to cultivate better relations with Ankara after decades of frostiness and a near war.

Iran and Egypt have also come so close to restoring diplomatic relations especially after Tehran had renamed as "Intifada" a street previously named after the assassin of late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.