JERUSALEM - Israel had secret contacts with Syria several months ago - well before recent Syrian overtures - but they broke down after word of the meetings leaked out, Israel's foreign minister said yesterday. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he was ready to open negotiations if Syria stops helping terror.
The secret meetings appeared part of an effort to restart peace talks between Israel and one of its most intractable enemies. Earlier talks broke down in 2000.
Syrian President Bashar Assad asked to resume official talks last month, but Israel leaders are split over whether to take up his offer.
Sharon said yesterday that Israel would readily restart negotiations with Syria, once Syria stopped aiding and harboring terrorist groups that continue to attack Israel. The main Palestinian militant groups, as well as the Lebanese group Hezbollah, all operate on Syrian territory.
Israel is ready and willing to negotiate once Syria
of course stops helping terror he told a news conference for foreign journalists.
Meanwhile, more than 80,000 Jewish settlers and their supporters demonstrated against Sharon's recent statements that Israel would unilaterally remove some settlements from the West Bank and Gaza if no peace deal with the Palestinians is reached soon. The uprooting of settlements tears the nation
read one protester's sign. Sharon
resign - we don't want you any more
read another.
While peace efforts with the Palestinians remain stalled, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and some other officials have been publicly pushing the government to accept Syria's offer to restart talks.
Shalom said yesterday that Israel had secret meetings seven or eight months ago with people very close to Assad.
Unfortunately
after two meetings that the Israeli partners had with their Syrian colleagues
it leaked out. And while it was exposed
of course the Syrians didn't continue to negotiate through this track
he said.
Shalom said he had requested an investigation into the leaks, which he said have severely damaged Israel's ability to negotiate with its Arab neighbors.
In Damascus, an official with the information ministry denied there had been any secret contacts. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Syria's policy remains linked to international initiatives that call on Israel to withdraw from all occupied territories and blamed Israel for the current stalemate.
Mahdi Dakhlalah, editor-in-chief of the Al-Baath newspaper of the ruling Baath party, said Syria has repeatedly insisted it would not do anything under the table. Rather
it puts all its papers on the table.
There is no need (for Syria) to hold secret contacts at all
