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Syria Rejects Sharon's Bid For Secret Talks
AMMAN, March 19 (News Agencies) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad revealed Monday that he had rejected offers from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's for secret peace talks.
"Once elected and even before the formation of his government, Ariel Sharon conveyed to us through a mediator a wish to hold secret negotiations and re-launch the Syrian dossier," Assad told Al-Majd, a leftist Jordanian weekly.
"I said to the mediator: 'Why does Sharon want secret negotiations? Is he ashamed to appear in front of the world as a man of peace? We will not consider these types of negotiations. When we negotiate, we do it in public.'"
Israel and Syria, at war since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, have not held peace talks since January 2000 when negotiations broke down over the return to Damascus of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967. At the time, Assad's late father, Hafez, was Syria's ruler.
Assad said he told Sharon's envoy: "We will not permit Sharon to damage the Palestinian file in the name of the Syrian dossier, and we will not allow the question of the Golan to be settled before that of Palestine, especially Jerusalem."
Assad also indicated he had recently proposed "to his brothers unifying the Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian files to block the path for Israeli leaders and to prevent them from weakening each of these portfolios."
With plans for a Palestinian-Syrian meeting on the sidelines of the upcoming summit of Arab leaders March 27-28 in Amman, Jordan, Assad expressed a hope that Damascus and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had transcended their differences "on the basis of the Palestinian struggle."
Before the start of the six-month Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, Syria often assailed Palestinians for agreeing to the Oslo peace process in 1993 and diluting the Arab negotiating position with Israel.
Meanwhile, a Damascus-based Palestinian group said Assad and Arafat will discuss the "threats of war" from Sharon's government during the upcoming meeting in Amman, the Damascus-based Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) said Monday.
"Sharon's threats of war and ways of facing them, the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Syrian aid needed to solve their problems," will be central to the Assad-Arafat talks to be held on the sidelines of the Arab summit, a member of the DFLP's political office, Famzi Rabah, said in a statement.
Rabah said he had "contributed to the reconciliation efforts carried out in recent months by the secretary general of the DFLP Nayef Hawatmeh" to allow for the meeting between Arafat and Assad.
He said that Hawatmeh met twice to that effect with Syrian Vice-President Abdel-Halim Khaddam. He said Assad and Arafat would also discuss "ways of restoring confidence and developing bilateral relations" which were hindered by the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian accords on Palestinian autonomy.
The DFLP is one of the three main splinter groups of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), dominated by Arafat's Fatah faction, and also includes Abu Ali Mustapha's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
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