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Sharon ready for peace talks with Syria

JERUSALEM May 9. The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said he was prepared to resume peace talks with Syria and praised the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, as a `partner' for peace.

The hard-line Mr. Sharon told Israel TV on Thursday that he had turned down recent overtures from Syrian President, Bashar Assad, to resume peace talks because he had felt the offer was a Syrian ploy to ease U.S. pressure on Damascus.

Mr. Sharon said, however, he now would be prepared to resume peace negotiations, as long as Syria did not set conditions. Syria has said it would only resume talks at the point where they last broke off three years ago. At that time, Israeli had proposed concessions on the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in the 1967 War.

Mr. Sharon said he had met Mr. Abbas ``many times, including in this house.''

He said Mr. Abbas was a Palestinian leader who had concluded that violence against Israel was fruitless and said he could be ``a partner'' for peace talks. Mr. Abbas has called violent Palestinian acts a mistake.

The interview was conducted at Mr. Sharon's farm in southern Israel. Israel demands that all violence cease before negotiations resume, but Mr. Sharon has said that a meeting between himself and Mr. Abbas is being planned.

In another interview Tuesday, Mr. Sharon set a new condition for progress on peace talks, saying that the Palestinians must first renounce their demand for the right for refugees from the war that followed Israel's creation in 1948 to return to their original homes along with their descendants — about 4 million people. Mr. Abbas turned down the condition, saying the issue must be negotiated.

The right-of-return issue was to have been taken up in the last stages of the so-called ``road map'' peace plan that has been handed to both Israel and the Palestinians by the Quartet of interested parties — the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

— AP

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