DAMASCUS - Syria on Thursday rejected Vice Premier Shimon Peres' invitation for President Bashar Assad to visit Jerusalem, saying the Israeli gesture reflected the country's weak position after its war with Lebanon.

The rejection came in a front page editorial in the ruling party's Al-Baath newspaper, which said: "Israel knows... that no Syrian citizen would ever accept this invitation."

On Tuesday, Peres invited Assad to visit Jerusalem in a TV interview. But Israeli television reported that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had countermanded Peres, fueling the discord over Olmert's hardline policies.

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Al-Baath wrote that Peres' move was an attempt to "evade peace and its requirements." It was also "proof of the Israeli government's weakness and failure to face recent changes stemming from the victory of the Lebanese resistance," the editorial said.

"Peace cannot be achieved through unacceptable protocol visits," the paper added.

Israeli-Syrian peace talks broke down in 2000, with Syria demanding assurances that Israel would return all of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War, extending down to the Sea of Galilee.

Israel wanted modifications to the pre-1967 border, and insisted that the issues of security arrangements and normalization be spelled out first.

Al-Baath said the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1978, and the ensuing peace treaty the following year, had failed to bring peace to the Arab and Egyptian people.

But Assad has in recent weeks renewed a call for peace talks with Israel. Last month, he told the German magazine Der Spiegel: "We want to make peace - peace with Israel."

In an interview with the BBC on Monday, Assad cast doubt on Israel's desire for peace.

"The first question is, can [Israel make peace] and do they have the will?" he told the BBC. "Second, the decision for peace is not in Israel, it is in Washington... Third, it depends on the will of the United Nations."

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