Last update - 00:00 13/04/2007
PM unlikely to approve Suleiman request to visit Syrian prisoner
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
The request of unofficial Syrian envoy Ibrahim Suleiman to meet with a Syrian prisoner jailed in Israel will apparently not be granted approval by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a senior official in the Prime Minister's Office said Thursday.
"Help me to help you," Suleiman, an American of Syrian origin, said Thursday. "If I met with the Syrian prisoner and bring a picture of him back I believe that this will help somewhat."
The PMO source said Thursday that the bureau had received a referral from the Public Security Ministry regarding Suleiman's request to visit the prisoner.
"This is a private visit of an American citizen who has not arrived on behalf of anyone, certainly not Syria," said the source.
"We have consulted on the matter and said we would look into it. It seems that as we don't allow every American visit security prisoners, this case will not be any different," said the source.
The former director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Alon Liel, who conducted secret talks with Syria over the summer, told Haaretz that by late Thursday both the Defense Ministry and the Public Security Ministry had authorized the visit, but the "political echelon" had yet to issue its response.
"It's a shame that in order to visit a prisoner one needs the authorization of the prime minister," Liel said Thursday.
Suleiman, was scheduled to meet on Friday with the Syrian prisoner, a Palestinian with Syrian citizenship. He is a member of Fatah and slipped into Israel in April 2005, with the declared intention to abduct an IDF soldier.
On Wednesday Suleiman met with Rina Hever, the mother of missing IDF soldier Guy Hever, and the author Sami Michael, the brother-in-law of Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy burried in Syria.
The issue of prisoners and missing soldiers has taken up a significant portion of Suleiman's current visit to Israel.
Last year, Suleiman met with Nadia Cohen, Eli Cohen's widow, and delivered certain messages from her to the Syrian authorities. For more than four decades Syria has refused to transfer Cohen's remains for burial in Israel.
In the past he also met with Yona Baumel, father of Zacharia Baumel, missing in action in the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yaaqub in Lebanon.
MK Nisim Ze'ev (Shas) asked Suleiman on Thursday during his appearance before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to help bring Cohen's remains for burial in Israel.
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