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Assad: No Full Peace with Syria without Resolution of Palestinian Conflict

[Financial Times-UK] Anna Fifield - Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president, has warned that a peace settlement with Israel without a resolution to the Palestinian conflict would be largely symbolic. Assad told the United Arab Emirates newspaper al-Khaleej that a comprehensive peace deal will require significant concessions on the Israeli side. "We give [the Israelis] the choice between comprehensive peace and a peace agreement which does not have any real value on the ground," he said. "There is a difference between a peace agreement and peace itself. A peace agreement is a piece of paper you sign. This does not mean trade and normal relations." The Syrian president is now suggesting that the Golan Heights would have to be returned as a precursor to a comprehensive treaty, which could not be forged without a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Our people will not accept that, especially since there are half a million Palestinians in our country whose position remains unresolved. It is impossible under these terms to have peace in the natural sense," Assad said. "Assad is very clearly saying here that they have to return the Golan to get a cold peace, but that there will not be anything more than a cold peace unless they deal with the Palestinian issue," said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Some policymakers in the U.S. consider negotiating with Syria an easier problem to resolve than the Palestinian conflict. However, "the Syrian track is actually very complicated because it does not involve just the Golan but it involves distancing itself from Iran, and that is going to be very hard," Tabler said.
2009-03-10 06:00:00
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