Syrian President Bashar Assad on Thursday said that peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians shouldn’t focus on the settlements issue, echoing the US position, while adding that Israel wasn’t a “partner for peace.”
Assad, who met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss the stalled Middle East peace process as well as Iraq and Lebanon, made his comments to reporters in Paris.
RELATED:Wikileaks: Assad - Iran not pursuing nuclear weaponsIndia's president supports Syria's claim on Golan Heights“We are against putting settlements at the center of peace talks,” Assad said. “If we want to talk about peace, we have to talk about legal rights, about territorial restitution and not talk about the settlements.”
Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed over Israel’s
refusal to freeze settlement construction, which Palestinians say must
be frozen before negotiations can resume. Philip J. Crowley, the US
State Department spokesman, said Thursday the US had recognized that
persuading Israel to halt Jewish settlements on disputed territory of
the West Bank had become “an end in itself rather than a means to an
end.”
Sarkozy and Assad discussed tensions in Lebanon that have risen over a
United Nations probe into the 2005 assassination of former premier Rafiq
Hariri, amid the possibility that members of Lebanon’s Shiite Muslim
Hizbullah group may be indicted. The movement, backed by Syria, is a
partner in Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s national unity
government.
“No one wants a confrontation among the Lebanese people,” Assad said. “No one wants civil strife.”
Assad said he “did not want to intrude with domestic questions of Lebanon” and declined to make further comments.