Syrian President Bashar Assad has told the BBC in an interview that his country would be prepared to hold talks with Israel provided that “an impartial arbiter” could be found. In a wide-ranging television interview, Bashar accused the US of neither having “the will or vision” to pursue peace in the Middle East.He suggested that President George W. Bush could not be an impartial umpire and said no direct dialogue had taken place between the two nations. “How can you talk about peace and at the same time isolation? How can you talk about peace and you adopt the doctrine of pre-emptive war?” he asked in the interview conducted by the BBC’s diplomatic editor, John Simpson.