Damascus: Peace will come in few months if negotiations start from stopping point
Syria-Turkey, Politics, 7/9/1999

The Washington-based US magazine Middle East Insight published on Thursday a long article by the US academic and writer Allon Bin Maeir on peace between Syria and Israel.

The article included a meeting with the chief Syrian negotiator in Washington, Walid al-Muallem, who stressed Syria's readiness to resume negotiations with Israel from the point where it had stopped, which means Israel's abidance to withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 border lines and a paper of principles and principles for security arrangements.

Al-Muallem added, "Syria is ready to relaunch the talks in order to reach its set objective very soon."

Talks during the interview between the US academic and ambassador al-Muallem also dealt with "cohesion between the Syrian and Lebanese tracks and the need to reach peace agreement on the two tracks and to be signed simultaneously."

The Syrian ambassador stressed that the Hizbullah Party is "a Lebanese national resistance movement and will abide by any agreement that serves the interests of the Syrian and Lebanese peoples."

The article quoted al-Muallem as saying that Syria "is not ready and is not keen to give any part of the homeland for political reasons." The Syrian ambassador presented a scenario on how to resume negotiations on that and at the due time: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak informs the US about his intention to resume the negotiations and then "we have to hear from the US side that Barak has accepted full withdrawal, which means to June 4, 1967 border line, then we can move to build the frame of peace which is based on mutual respect, security and normalization."

It was noted, however, that the interview, which was made directly after Barak's election, is being published just one week before the visit of the Israeli prime minister to Washington in order to hold talks with President Bill Clinton on the Middle East peace process.

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