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Assad: After Bush, we will be able to talk directly with Israel By Yoav Stern and Shahar Ilan, Haaretz Correspondents and Agencies Tags: Golan Heights, Syria  A former U.S. envoy and Mideast negotiator yesterday called for peace talks in which Israel would yield the Golan Heights to Syria in return for a peace treaty and withdrawal of support for Hezbollah. However, he said Syria was not likely to negotiate with Israel without an American presence. Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the House Mideast subcommittee that Israel had enlisted Turkey to help register its interest in peace negotiations to Syria. But Indyk, who was a U.S. negotiator during former President Bill Clinton's efforts in 2000 to mediate an agreement, said, "Syria will not sit down with Israel without the United States in the room." Advertisement Meanwhile, the Prime Minister's Office said yesterday that Israel was genuinely interested in restarting talks with Syria. Earlier yesterday, Syrian President Bashar Assad confirmed that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had offered an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for full peace with its Arab neighbor. But Assad said he did not expect direct talks with Israel to be resumed in the coming year. "Perhaps we will be able to talk about direct negotiations with the next American administration," he said in an interview published yesterday in the Qatari newspaper Al-Watan. Israel would not comment on the withdrawal offer, but did say it was interested in negotiating with Damascus. "We are interested in peace with Syria. We know what the Syrians expect from negotiations and the Syrians know what Israel wants from them," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Olmert. Talks between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights were last held in 2000, but broke down over the extent of an Israeli pullback at the Sea of Galilee. Assad said in the interview that the message had been passed from Israel to Syria via Turkey, often seen as a mediator between the two enemy states. He said that intensive contacts between Israel and Syria began following the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan "announced Israel's readiness to withdraw from the Golan Heights in return for peace with Syria. Turkey entered the picture a year ago, in April 2007 to be precise. Olmert stressed to the Turkish prime minister his readiness to return the Golan," Assad said. Erdogan had delivered Olmert's message a week ago. "After that," Assad said, "we heard Olmert's statement that 'We know what Syria wants and it knows what we want'." Olmert made the comment in an interview to Haaretz to mark the Passover holiday. The Syrian media had previously reported that Erdogan phoned Assad and told him that Olmert was willing to give up the Golan. Erdogan is expected to arrive in Damascus over the weekend for the opening of a Turkish-Syrian business forum, and will reportedly be meeting with Assad to discuss the talks, among other issues. Acknowledging talks through a third party, Assad told a closed meeting of the ruling Baath party on Sunday that an Israeli commitment to withdraw fully from the Golan had to be a basis for talks, and any direct negotiations would be public. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday warned Syria against improving ties to Israel and the United States, and urged Islamic nations to stand up against Western "conspiracies and wars." Following the Iranian leader's talks yesterday with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, Ahmadinejad's office issued a statement calling on Middle Eastern nations to "stand on guard in the face of the conspiracies and civil wars our enemies our planning and prepare to cause them to fail." Ahmadinejad warned that the United States was planning to involve itself in Middle Eastern regional matters, but said its policies on Iran and Syria were failing. Following contacts between Israel and Syria, officials say significant U.S. involvement will probably be necessary for negotiations to move ahead, and that Syria is still demanding such involvement. However, both Israeli and foreign experts on Syria told Haaretz on Wednesday that a change in the American position was not on the horizon, and that no details on the Israeli position have been included in Wednesday's Syrian media reports on Israel's willingness to withdraw from the Golan Heights. Moallem said Wednesday that if Israel was serious about making peace with Syria and withdrawing from the Golan, there was nothing to prevent the renewal of negotiations. But he added that Syria was not prepared to hold talks with Israel that would harm the Palestinian negotiating track. Speaking at a news conference in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, Moallem said the Syrian position was that Israel had to withdraw to the lines of June 4, 1967, not the international boundary. His statements were carried by the official Syrian news agency SANA. In response to reports that Olmert had agreed to withdraw from the Golan, the head of the Knesset House Committee, MK David Tal (Kadima), said he hoped to quickly pass a bill requiring an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan to be dependent on a national referendum. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Fake reactor Syrian envoy: Photos of alleged nuke site fabricated by CIA. Modern Moses Commander of legendary Jewish immigrant ship Exodus dies at 90.

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