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JERUSALEM: Syria and Israel could clinch a peace deal
in six months, a Syrian-American businessman at the heart of secret
unofficial peace talks said on Thursday after appearing before a top
parliamentary panel.
“Peace can be reached in six
months if both parties are willing,” Ibrahim [Abe] Suleiman said.
“The negotiations are finished. There are only minor things that
could be fixed in two or three meetings. Peace is possible now.”
Suleiman spoke to reporters after
appearing before parliament’s powerful foreign affairs and defense
committee with Alon Liel, a former Israeli foreign ministry director
general who headed the Israeli side in the unofficial talks.
Suleiman and Liel headed two
years of the secret talks during which understandings were reached
for a peace treaty between Syria and Israel.
“Our work is done, now it’s
up to officials in Israel and Syria to sit down and iron out their
differences,” the US businessman said. “We gave them a peace
map.”
Syria’s “President Bashar al-Assad
wants peace with Israel. He wants to make peace and be known as the
man of peace.
“I believe him, but Bashar al-Assad
alone cannot make peace, he needs a partner in Israel. I challenge
the Israeli government to answer President Bashar’s call for peace
to sit down together and work things out.”
Reports of the secret talks first
appeared in the Israeli press in January.
At the time, the Israeli and
Syrian governments denied any knowledge of the contacts, which were
held in Europe between September 2004 and July 2006 in the presence
of a European mediator.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert has repeatedly rejected peace overtures by the Syrian
president in recent months, saying Damascus must first stop
supporting militant groups in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Peace talks between Israel and
Syria collapsed in 2000, in part because of disputes over the return
of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967
Six Day War and unilaterally annexed in 1981.
--AFP
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