Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Wednesday that peace talks with Israel had stalled because Israel was not interested in achieving peace.
Israel’s demand for negotiations without conditions meant that it wanted to bring down the peace process, Assad said after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in Damascus.
“We discussed today the ways to bring the peace process out of the deadlock that it has reached ... because of the absence of a serious Israeli partner who aims to achieve peace,” he told a joint news conference with Erdogan.
“When Israel says it wants negotiations without conditions it means it wants negotiations with no foundation. This is like having a building with no foundation, then it’s very easy to be brought down and they want to bring down the peace process,” he said.
Peace talks between Israel and Syria faltered in 2000 over Damascus’s demand for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
Turkey last year facilitated contacts that focused on Syrian demands for a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights, and Israel’s accusations that Damascus was arming militants in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Those contacts failed to produce formal negotiations.
Relations between Turkey and Israel turned sour after Israel launched a three-week incursion into the Gaza Strip last December and Erdogan said Israel no longer trusted Turkey to mediate peace talks with Syria.
On Wednesday, Erdogan reiterated that Turkey remained committed to mediating peace talks.
Meanwhile, a German mediator on Wednesday gave Hamas Israel’s response to a proposed swap freeing hundreds of jailed Palestinians for captured soldier Gilad Shalit, and the Islamist group said it would need days to review the new draft.
Signalling a possible breakthrough, a Hamas official said he expected the group to send a delegation from the Gaza Strip to Damascus yesterday to meet exiled Hamas leaders.
Israeli Security Minister Eli Yishai reiterated Israel’s misgivings over a prisoner amnesty likely to boost Hamas.
“We always say ‘not at any price’ because otherwise our enemies would exploit it. But on the other hand, we have to make every possible effort,” Yishai told Israel’s Army Radio. “Where is the middle ground? I think any further [public] words about this would be excessive.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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