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World Jewish News
'Israel ready for talks with Syria without preconditions'
20.05.2009
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday after talks with U.S. President Barack Obama that Israel was ready to immediately open peace talks with Syria without preconditions.
"There was agreement that we must immediately launch peace talks," Netanyahu told reporters at Ben-Gurion Airport after three days of talks in Washington.
"I said I was ready to immediately open peace talks with the Palestinians, by the way, with the Syrians as well, of course, without preconditions," Netanyahu said. "But I made it clear that any peace settlement there must find a solution to Israel's security needs".
Netanyahu, who took office seven weeks ago, had appeared cool to the idea of reopening stalled talks with Damascus. He has repeatedly voiced opposition to pulling out of the Golan Heights, territory Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War which Syria wants returned as part of any peace deal."
Netanyahu also said that he and Obama concurred that the wider Arab world should be involved in the Middle East talk.
"Israel is interested in widening the circle of peace, and in bringing in other Arab states, [but] the Arab states must also make concessions in the process," he said. "In the coming weeks and days we will begin a round of talks with an America to work on these points."
Netanyahu said Tuesday, after a day of meetings on Capitol Hill with U.S. lawmakers, that Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel was prepared to relaunch peace talks with the Palestinian Authority immediately.
Concluding his three-day trip in Washington, the prime minister said that he and Obama were "working together to reignite the peace process and are looking for ways to bring external sources from the Arab world into the process."
The U.S. officials reiterated throughout their talks with the Israeli leader that Washington is committed to a two-state solution and will not tolerate continued settlement activity in the West Bank.
Netanyahu aide: Two-state solution is 'childish and stupid
Meanwhile, an aide to Netanyahu said Wednesday that media focus on the idea of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, favored by President Barack Obama, is childish and stupid.
The aide, Ron Dermer, spoke to The Associated Press after Netanyahu and his entourage arrived home from Washington. He denied that he had called the two-state concept itself childish and stupid, as he was quoted earlier as saying as an anonymous official briefing reporters on the plane carrying Netanyahu home.
Obama has made it clear that the U.S. backs creation of a Palestinian state, but Netanyahu has not endorsed the concept.
"I told reporters that the focus by the media on the concept of solving the Israel-Palestinian issue through a two-state solution is childish and stupid, but I deny that I described the idea that way," Dermer said.
By Barak Ravi, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
Источник: Haaretz
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