British Foreign Secretary Meets Assad
March 19, 1998 - 0:0
DAMASCUS British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook met Syrian President Hafez al-Assad here Wednesday for talks expected to focus on European Union efforts to revive the moribund Middle East peace process. Cook, who arrived in Damascus after a tumultuous visit to Israel, held talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara ahead of his meeting with Assad, the official Syrian news agency SANA said.
SANA said that the meeting between Cook, who is representing the 15-nation European Union, and Shara concerned developments in the peace process and the Iraqi crisis over UN weapons inspections. Syrian presidential spokesman Gebrane Kourieh said Shara attended the meeting between Cook and Assad, details of which were not immediately available. Basil Eastwood, the British ambassador to Syria, told reporters here on Tuesday that Cook wants to help restart Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations.
No plan would be complete if we neglected the Syrian track, he said. Syrian-Israeli peace talks have been frozen for two years with Damascus insisting the Israeli government honor a reported agreement in principle by the previous Israeli administration to withdraw from the occupied Golan Heights. The Zionist state captured the strategic plateau from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in 1981.
A conditional Israeli offer to pull out of the self-declared Israeli security zone in southern Lebanon was also expected to be raised during Cook's talks here. Damascus, the main powerbroker in Lebanon with more than 30,000 troops there, and Beirut are demanding an unconditional Israeli withdrawal from the buffer zone set up in southern Lebanon in 1985. Following his talks here, Cook is to leave for Lebanon, the final stop on a whirlwind three-day tour of the region which has already taken him to Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian territories and Israel, officials said.
Cook traveled to Syria from Israel, where his one-day visit caused a diplomatic storm. During his brief stay, Cook sparked a diplomatic incident with the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by meeting Palestinian officials at the site of a controversial new Jewish settlement in East Bait-ul-Moqaddas. (AFP)
SANA said that the meeting between Cook, who is representing the 15-nation European Union, and Shara concerned developments in the peace process and the Iraqi crisis over UN weapons inspections. Syrian presidential spokesman Gebrane Kourieh said Shara attended the meeting between Cook and Assad, details of which were not immediately available. Basil Eastwood, the British ambassador to Syria, told reporters here on Tuesday that Cook wants to help restart Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations.
No plan would be complete if we neglected the Syrian track, he said. Syrian-Israeli peace talks have been frozen for two years with Damascus insisting the Israeli government honor a reported agreement in principle by the previous Israeli administration to withdraw from the occupied Golan Heights. The Zionist state captured the strategic plateau from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in 1981.
A conditional Israeli offer to pull out of the self-declared Israeli security zone in southern Lebanon was also expected to be raised during Cook's talks here. Damascus, the main powerbroker in Lebanon with more than 30,000 troops there, and Beirut are demanding an unconditional Israeli withdrawal from the buffer zone set up in southern Lebanon in 1985. Following his talks here, Cook is to leave for Lebanon, the final stop on a whirlwind three-day tour of the region which has already taken him to Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian territories and Israel, officials said.
Cook traveled to Syria from Israel, where his one-day visit caused a diplomatic storm. During his brief stay, Cook sparked a diplomatic incident with the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by meeting Palestinian officials at the site of a controversial new Jewish settlement in East Bait-ul-Moqaddas. (AFP)