International News
Only Turkey can act as mediator with Israel: Syria
Posted on: Mon October 04, 2010
International Highlights
DAMASCUS : Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Sunday that only Turkey can act as an intermediary in any indirect peace negotiations between Syria and Israel. Turkey has shown itself to be an honest intermediary. Indirect talks must therefore be under Turkish mediation, and begin in Turkey at the point where they stopped in December 2008 when Israel attacked the Gaza Strip, he said.
He ruled out any country other than Turkey being involved in indirect talks, telling reporters: Any efforts by other parties will consist of helping the Turkish role. Muallem was speaking on the sidelines of a Syrian-Turkish ministerial meeting in the northern port of Lattakia.
Turkey began mediating in May 2008 between Syria and Israel, primarily focusing on the Golan Heights plateau Israel occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed.
Four rounds of indirect talks lasted just over six months until they were broken off by Israel s turn-of-the-year offensive against the Islamist Hamas-ruled Gaza enclave. Since then, Turkey s ties with Israel, previously a close regional ally, have badly deteriorated amid vehement criticism from Ankara of the Jewish state s heavy-handed policies against the Palestinians.
Israel s relations with Ankara chilled even further when Israeli commandos attacked a ferry carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza on May 31, killing nine Turkish activists. Syrian Deputy Vice President Mohammed Hassan Turkmani told the news conference both countries would work to make the Middle East prosperous and stable.
Courtesy : Business Recorder