Harretz: Bishara acted as Syria-Israel mediator in 1990s talks

In an interview with the Arab-language Nazareth-based newspaper, A-Sinara paper (issued in the Palestinian territories), that will be published on Friday (Today) the Syrian former vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam said that "Israel and Syria were very close to signing a peace treaty in the mid 1990s," Haaretz reported.

Haaretz (www.Haaretz.com) reporting on Khaddam saying in the A-Sinara article, shows that then leaders President Hafez Assad and prime minister Itzhak Rabin, "had already tentatively agreed on most of the disputed issues," and that "Syria was ready for peace. As for Israel, it seemed like Israel was ready for it but he (Rabin) was killed."

The report speaks of member of the Israeli Knesset Azmi Bishara (Balad) acting as a go between, and that also al-Assad "received a letter from US president Bill Clinton in which Rabin allegedly agreed to withdraw Israeli troops to the 1967 borders" but unresolved security issue came in the way of an agreement.