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Damascus says invitation ânot seriousâ
Syria said on Monday an invitation by Israelâs president to President Bashar al-Assad to visit Jerusalem was not a serious response to Syriaâs recent calls to resume peace talks that broke down in 2000.
| Why not? He publicly invited Bashar al-Asshat to come over and talk... |
âWhat we need is a serious response, this is not a serious response,â Syriaâs Expatriates Minister Buthaina Shaaban told CNN. âA serious response is to say, âYes, we are interested in peace, we want to... resume negotiations where they stopped, with the co-sponsorship of the United States, as it was in Madrid.â That would be a serious response,â she said.
| "I mean, just because we walked out of the last set of talks, that don't mean we shouldn't pick up where we left off. Does it?" |
âThe only solution is to go back where we left off... This is the only way we can do it,â Shaaban insisted.
| So don't come to Jerusalem. Then you won't have talks. And you still won't have the Golan Heights. Strange, how that works, isn't it? |
âThe ball is really still in the Israeli court to respond seriously.â
| You got a public invitation from their head of state to your head of state. Should he send his car to pick you up? |
Suleiman Haddad, chairman of the foreign relations committee in the Syrian parliament, said that invitation by Israeli President Moshe Katsav is âevasive and problematic,â and could never lead to the resumption of the stalled peace talks.
| What part about "come on over and we'll talk" is evasive and problematic? I guess I'm not subtle enough to see it... |
The dismissive remarks by Haddad came hours after Katsav invited Syrian President Bashar Assad to come to Israel to talk peace. Haddad also denied the Syrian government had been involved in any secret negotiations with Israel.
| He also denied he had black hair and a moustache, and that his name was Haddad... |
Saying that Syria wants to resume peace talks with the Jewish state, Haddad told The Associated Press that âIsrael is fully aware that such proposals are evasive and problematic and could never lead to the hoped-for target, which is to restart negotiations from the point they had last reached.â Imad Fawzi Shueibi, a Syrian political analyst, called the Katsav invitation âan attempt to abort the Syrian peace initiative.â
| "Words, y'see, don't really mean what they sound like they mean..." |
âSyria is not begging for negotiations,â Shuebi said. âThis (invitation) is impossible and they (the Israelis) are fully aware that Syria would never respond to such proposals, which mean a natural end to the Syrian peace initiative.â
Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2004-01-13 |
