Israeli envoys holding a new round of indirect peace talks with Syrian counterparts in Turkey will propose the leaders of the two states meet at a conference in France next month, Israeli political sources said yesterday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched Turkish-mediated negotiations last month but there has been no word on prospects for a summit given the gaps between the sides’ bedrock demands.
Both men are to attend a July 13 summit of a union of European and Mediterranean countries in Paris and Olmert, who sent aides to resume talks in Turkey on Saturday, has offered to meet Assad on the sidelines, the sources said.
“The idea isn’t necessarily to hold an hours-long conversation, just a face-to-face encounter that would, in itself, serve to take things forward,” one source said. “This is one of the fresh ideas that is being raised in Turkey.”
According to the source, Olmert aides Yoram Turbowicz and Shalom Turjeman held indirect talks with Syrian counterparts on Sunday and were continuing yesterday. There was no confirmation on this from Syrian or Turkish officials.
The last round of indirect Israeli-Syrian talks took place last month at an Istanbul hotel, with Turkish diplomats shuttling between the delegations’ rooms.
Israeli political sources had no immediate word on the venue of the current talks.
The last direct talks — between then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and then-Syrian foreign minister Farouq al-Shara — stalled in 2000 over Israel’s reluctance to return the entire Golan Heights, a strategic plateau captured from Syria in a 1967 war.
In related news, Olmert told visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Israel will continue building new homes in occupied East Jerusalem, rebuffing her criticism of plans for settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian areas.
Israeli media reported yesterday that Olmert told Rice that while Israel would not confiscate more Palestinian land, it would build in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem it expected to keep as part of any final settlement with the Palestinians.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion