AL QUDS, Jan 16: Israelis and Syrians reached understandings for a peace treaty in secret unofficial talks over the past two years, a daily reported on Tuesday, but both governments denied knowledge of the contacts.
The talks were held in Europe between September 2004 and July 2006 in the presence of a European mediator and with the knowledge of Israeli and Syrian officials, Haaretz said.
The last meeting was held during Israel's summer war with Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, it said.
The contacts ended when the Israelis refused a Syrian request that they be upgraded to official status and include a senior US official.
The paper said the office of prime minister Ariel Sharon and his successor Ehud Olmert, were kept informed of the contacts, but officials denied this.
“Neither Prime Minister Ehud Olmert nor his office were informed of these secret contacts with the Syrians and their arrangements,” spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.
Olmert later told journalists: “I knew of nothing. No one in the government was involved in this matter.
“It was a private initiative on the part of an individual who spoke with himself. From what I read, his interlocutor was an eccentric from the US, someone not serious or dignified, and it is inappropriate to say any more than I have said, which was already too much.” Dov Weisglass, a senior aide to Sharon, told the Ynet news site that “the Haaretz report is baseless. Sharon was never updated on such negotiations.
Someone may have said something once, but it's on the level of gossip. There was no such thing in practice.” A source at the Syrian foreign ministry issued a straightforward denial of the story.
Under the agreement, Israel would withdraw from all of the strategic Golan Heights that it captured from Syria in the 1967 six day war and annexed in 1981.
Syria requested the withdrawal be completed in five years, Israel asked for 15. The territory is currently home to 15,000 Israelis.
A buffer zone in the form of a park administered by Syria would be established along the western edge of the plateau. Israelis would not need visas to access the park.
Israeli and Syrian territory on either side of the park would be demilitarised. The Syrian zone would be four times larger than the Israeli one.
The Jewish state would retain control over the use of the waters of the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee.
Damascus would agree to stop supporting Lebanon's Shia movement Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and would distance itself from Iran, the paper said.
An early-warning system would be established, including a station on Mount Hermon in the northernmost tip of the Golan run by the United States.
The Israeli representative in all the talks was Alon Liel, a former director general of the foreign ministry.
The Syrian representative was Ibrahim Suleiman, a Syrian-American businessman.
The European mediator was a senior official in a foreign ministry, but the paper revealed neither the country nor his identity.
“We insisted on making the existence of meetings known to the relevant parties,” the paper quoted Liel as saying. “Nonetheless, there was no official Israeli connection to the content of the talks and to the ideas that were raised during the meetings.” Liel reported the results after every meeting to a senior foreign ministry official, with the office of Sharon also kept up to date, and the European mediator also met with Israeli officials, the paper said.
“I was convinced that the Syrians want a peace agreement with you,” the paper quoted the mediator as telling Israeli officials.
The mediator told Israeli officials further that the Syrian regime was concerned the nation's oil resources were running out, leading to an economic crash, and that a peace treaty would lead to a lifting of US sanctions on Syria imposed in 2004.
Official peace talks collapsed in 2000, in part because of disputes over the return of the Golan Heights.
Israel said in December it would accelerate housing projects on settlements in the Golan Heights after Mr Olmert rejected renewing peace talks despite a call by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.—AFP