WASHINGTON. Dec 11: Peace talks between Israel and Syria, the first for almost four years and the most high-powered ever, will resume in Washington on Wednesday and probably last two days, the US mediator said on Friday, reports Reuters.
Dennis Ross, special coordinator for Middle East peace talks, said the two sides agreed to come together again because they thought the talks could meet their needs and because they had had enough of merely talking about talks.
US President Bill Clinton announced the resumption on Wednesday and officials have been working since then on the dates, venues and other arrangements.
The United States says the two countries agree to resume the talks where they left off in early 1996. apparently without resolving a long disagreement over what Israel had offered in the previous talks.
Asked to explain the formula. Ross said: "They are approaching this from the standpoint of casing everything on what they have discussed and
talked about before, and they're resuming in light of that.
"Both sides have a level of confidence about the possibility of their needs being met. and that's one of the reasons that they have come to the conclusion that it's important to get back to the table." he told a briefing.
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who helped clinch the deal on a Middle East trip this week, told CNN on Wednesday that Washington gave no assurances to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad to persuade Syria to Join the talks.
The negotiations will be between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara.
"The talks will begin without conditions, beyond the fact that they will resume from where they left off." she told CNN.
The United States has been trying to bring Israel and Syria back together again since Barak took office in July, but Syria insisted Israel state that in the old talks it gave a firm commitment to full withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
Withdrawal from the Golan
Heights, captured by Israel in the Middle East war of 1967. Is at the core of the negotiations, alongside security arrangements for Israel, a normalisation of relations between the two countries and a timetable for synchronizing those three elements.
Ross said Albright and. Clinton would be involved in the talks but the United States wants Israel and Syria to do as much as possible bilaterally.
Albright has cancelled plans to go to Panama next Tuesday for a ceremony to hand the Panama Canal over to the Panamanians and to Brussels on Wednesday for a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers. US officials said.
Other officials said most of the talks would take place in Blair House, where the US government often puts up visiting dignitaries. The negotiators wifi also have some meeting with Clinton in the White House across the road, they said.
Ross said that, after four months of argument about how to resume direct talks. Israel and Syria seemed to have concluded that the discussion was going nowhere.