Barack Obama’s envoy in Syria to push for Mideast peace
Saturday, June 13, 2009 at 1:25 pm
DAMASCUS: US envoy George Mitchell is to hold talks with Syrian leaders Saturday on his first visit to Damascus as President Barack Obama’s administration steps up its efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.
Mitchell, on the latest leg of a regional tour, is set to pursue the Obama administration’s cautious pursuit of diplomatic engagement with Syria in a bid to promote an end to the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict.
He is accompanied by Jeffrey Feltman, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, who has visited Damascus twice since Obama took office in January.
Mitchell arrived in Syria on Friday from Beirut, where he pledged that Washington would not sacrifice Lebanon as it seeks to reach comprehensive Middle East peace deal.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters in Washington that Mitchell’s trip was partly a follow-up to Obama’s speech in Cairo last week where he vowed to seek a “new beginning” in ties with the Muslim world.
Syria on Tuesday expressed renewed readiness to resume preliminary contacts with Israel through Turkish go-betweens on relaunching peace negotiations that have faltered in the past over the fate of the Golan Heights.
Last year, Turkey brokered four rounds of indirect contacts but Syria suspended them in December when Israel launched its devastating war on Gaza.
The new Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out meeting Syria’s central demand for peace — the return of the Golan plateau that Israel seized in war in 1967.
The Israeli cabinet’s decision drew an angry reaction from President Bashar al-Assad who described Israel as “the major obstacle to peace.”
Mitchell, who has already visited Israel, the West Bank, Egypt and Jordan, said earlier this week that wants stalled Middle East peace talks to resume soon and wrap up quickly.
“We all share an obligation to create the conditions for the prompt resumption and early conclusion of negotiations,” he said in Jerusalem.
The Obama administration has been cautiously pursuing diplomatic engagement with Syria, which has long had strained ties with Washington.
In Cairo on Thursday, Mitchell urged Arab states to take “meaningful steps and important actions” to make peace with Israel — which has only signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
Former US president Jimmy Carter also visited Syria on Thursday and said he believed Washington could lift sanctions on Damascus and upgrade ties to ambassador level.
Washington first imposed economic sanctions on Syria in 2004 over charges that it was a state sponsor of terrorism, and they have been extended several times since.
Ties deteriorated after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005.
Washington recalled its ambassador in February 2005 following Hariri’s murder, widely blamed on Syria which has categorically denied any involvement.
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