04 January 2004	Sunday	11 Ziqa'ad 1424

DAMASCUS, Jan 3: Syria accused Israel on Saturday of seeking to abort any chance for peace through an apparent drive to double the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied Golan Heights.

"This is part of Israel's policy to abort any inclination toward peace," Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam told reporters after meeting an Iraqi delegation of tribal leaders.

On Wednesday, Israeli Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz said the government had agreed to double the settlers on the Golan to tighten the Jewish state's grip over the strategic plateau, which was captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.

However, on Friday, Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there were no plans to expand Jewish settlements in the heights.

Olmert said Katz, who runs the right-wing cabinet's settlement committee, might have wanted to press for such a plan but he had been wrong to say there was any scheme to develop agricultural, tourist or settlement infrastructures.

Some 17,000 Jewish settlers live among 20,000 Druze who consider themselves as Syrians.

"This (expansion plan) and the ongoing slaughtering of Palestinians affirms that Israel was continuing its enmity for peace," said Khaddam, referring to Israel's crackdown on Palestinians waging an uprising in the West Bank and Gaza.

President Bashar al-Assad has recently urged Washington to help revive Syrian-Israeli peace talks that fell apart in 2000.

Israel annexed the Golan in 1981, a unilateral move that was condemned internationally. Syria, still technically at war with Israel, demands the area's return as the price for peace with the Arab world.

As well as strategic high ground near hostile neighbours, the fertile Golan Heights ensure Israeli control of important water resources in the arid region, land for vineyards, orchards and cattle-grazing as well as Israel's only ski resort.-Reuters