Syrian president 'backs Lebanon peace plan'

Syria’s president has agreed to a proposal to halt violence along Israel’s northern border if Israel promises to end flights over Lebanon and not attack its territory, a senior Western diplomat says.

A ceasefire would be followed by efforts to renew peace talks between Israel and Syria which were suspended in 2000.

Israel did not respond to the proposal, which was contained in a document written in October by a Western mediator, the senior diplomat involved in the effort told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

Israeli officials would not comment on the effort – parts of which were also reported yesterday by the Israeli newspaper Maariv – and no reaction was immediately available from Syria.

Earlier, Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom said the two countries had held informal talks several months ago. Israel suspended the talks, concerned Syria was merely trying to gain favour with the United States. Word of the meetings was leaked, he said, and contacts broke down.

The diplomat’s statements came two days after The New York Times quoted Syrian president Bashar Assad as saying he was prepared to resume peace talks with Israel. In response to that interview, Israel officials said Assad should first show good faith by reining in the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and Palestinian militant groups based in Syria.

Assad again criticised Israel last night, turning to a recurring theme that the Jewish state with its occupation of war-conquered Arab lands was at the core of Palestinian-Israeli violence and turmoil throughout the region.

Speaking in the Syrian capital Damascus, Assad accused Israel of responding to “an Arab willingness to make peace” with “negligence and rejection”. He claimed that tension throughout the region was due to “the policies of escalation and extremism the Israeli government”.

The diplomat said the proposal emerged from a trip to Damascus by a Western mediator shortly after an October 5 Israeli air strike against a camp in Syria which the Israelis said was a training base for Palestinian militants.

The air strike, which came in response to a suicide bombing in Israel, was the first time in more than three decades that Israeli warplanes had attacked deep in Syrian territory. Syrian officials said the base had been empty for years, and no-one was hurt in the raid.

The diplomat said the Syrian leadership was desperate to avoid a repeat of the raid, which Assad feared would expose him as weak at a time when Syria was already under great US pressure to end support for terrorism in the wake of the war in Iraq.

Under the terms of the proposal, Syria would pledge that ”no violence against Israel will come out of its territory or from Lebanon”, meaning Hezbollah would cease attacks on Israeli targets, the diplomat said.

In exchange, Israel would have to agree to halt its military flights over Lebanon, and agree not to attack any target in Syria. After a period of quiet, the sides would agree to resume efforts to resolve their territorial dispute.

Assad agreed to the terms, but in Israel the idea has been blocked by the government, the diplomat said. The diplomat said Syrian officials still occasionally called the mediator to ask whether there was movement in the Israeli position.

Syrian-Israeli peace talks ended in March 2000. At the time Israel was offering to return virtually all of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau it seized from Syria in the 1967 war. But then-Israeli premier Ehud Barak and Assad’s late father Hafez Assad could not agree on the final details.