Syria's president is a pragmatist who sees talks with Israel as a prerequisite for stability and peace in the Middle East
Alain Gresh
(deputy director of Le Monde diplomatique, Paris)
guardian.co.uk, Saturday July 12, 2008
"Just before his visit to Paris for the Mediterranean Union summit, Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, said that economic relations between the countries of the Mediterranean could not be developed while there were ongoing regional conflicts, starting with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
We talked for two hours. He thinks that if there is no political dialogue and peace between Arabs and Israelis, the region will move towards conservatism and extremism. Terrorism, he said, is a state of mind and has no borders: Syria now has homegrown al-Qaida terrorism, not related to the organisation but to a state of mind. If peace is not achieved, all the reforms the Arabs need (economic development, education, culture) will fail to come about and the whole region will be destabilised.......
Assad thinks it is necessary to wait for a new US administration in 2009 before Syrian-Israeli talks will get anywhere, since their success will need a powerful intermediary, which Assad believes can only be the US. Even so, there has to be progress during the waiting period, which is the point of the current indirect talks......
....Syria wants to start from where Assad père and Barak left off. It will be easier and avoid wasting time. Except on his insistence on recovering the whole of the Golan, Bashar shows great flexibility, and he reminded me that during 1999-2000 his father was flexible, too: Israel had demanded that it keep a warning post on Syrian territory – an unacceptable condition since Syria cannot accept any Israeli military presence on its soil. An agreement was reached, to station US military personnel in the post.....
....But Assad understands that peace with Israel will change the whole region, because it will also bring peace between Lebanon and Israel and this will solve the Hizbullah problem, helping to transform this organisation into a political one......."
Alain Gresh
(deputy director of Le Monde diplomatique, Paris)
guardian.co.uk, Saturday July 12, 2008
"Just before his visit to Paris for the Mediterranean Union summit, Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, said that economic relations between the countries of the Mediterranean could not be developed while there were ongoing regional conflicts, starting with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
We talked for two hours. He thinks that if there is no political dialogue and peace between Arabs and Israelis, the region will move towards conservatism and extremism. Terrorism, he said, is a state of mind and has no borders: Syria now has homegrown al-Qaida terrorism, not related to the organisation but to a state of mind. If peace is not achieved, all the reforms the Arabs need (economic development, education, culture) will fail to come about and the whole region will be destabilised.......
Assad thinks it is necessary to wait for a new US administration in 2009 before Syrian-Israeli talks will get anywhere, since their success will need a powerful intermediary, which Assad believes can only be the US. Even so, there has to be progress during the waiting period, which is the point of the current indirect talks......
....Syria wants to start from where Assad père and Barak left off. It will be easier and avoid wasting time. Except on his insistence on recovering the whole of the Golan, Bashar shows great flexibility, and he reminded me that during 1999-2000 his father was flexible, too: Israel had demanded that it keep a warning post on Syrian territory – an unacceptable condition since Syria cannot accept any Israeli military presence on its soil. An agreement was reached, to station US military personnel in the post.....
....But Assad understands that peace with Israel will change the whole region, because it will also bring peace between Lebanon and Israel and this will solve the Hizbullah problem, helping to transform this organisation into a political one......."
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