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Assad planning to fold?
 Syrian President Bashar Assad is offering to make peace with Israel and says he is ready to cooperate with the United States in stabilizing Iraq, a former senior State Department official said Wednesday. "Something is going on in Syria and it is time for us to pay attention," said Martin Indyk, assistant secretary of state for the Near East and U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration.
| This is something to watch. If anything actually comes of it, it'll be more significant than Muammar throwing in the towel. But I imagine there's going to be a surge in our direction, but then it'll subside. But I don't know enough about Syria or Assad to be sure... |
In a three-hour meeting with the Syrian president last month in Damascus, Indyk said he detected a "clear change" in Assad's views on a number of fronts. On peacemaking, Assad offered to hold talks with Israel without preconditions, Indyk said, and had made several overtures to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the latter rebuffed. In the past, Indyk said, Syria had insisted that any peace talks should resume where they left off during the Clinton administration - with Israel offering to give up all of the Golan Heights, a strategic area Israel won in the 1967 Mideast war. And, Indyk said, Assad had dropped a demand that Israel reach an agreement with the Palestinians before Israel could resume negotiations with Syria.
On the domestic side, Indyk said, Assad spoke "about the need to reform the government." "It's worth watching and it is worth testing," Indyk said at a seminar at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, of which Indyk is the director.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-10-07 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=45289 |
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