Olmert proposes talks with Assad

TEL AVIV, Israel, July 9 (UPI) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday he was willing to meet Syrian President Bashar Assad "anywhere he wants" and discuss peace.

In an interview with Al Arabiyah TV, Olmert addressed the Syrian leader: "You know I am ready for direct peace negotiations with you," he said.

"Bashar Assad doesn't want to sit with me," Olmert continued. "He wants to sit with the Americans. The Americans don't want to sit with him. I am willing to sit with him. ... We'll discuss peace, not war, I don't want to fight the Syrians," he added.

Assad has often said he wants peace talks with Israel, and Olmert agreed. However, last month Vice President Farouk al-Shara said Syria wanted the United States to sponsor the process and that an American representative should attend the official meetings.

U.S. President George Bush indicated he would not stop Israel from talking to Syria, but Washington would not be involved in the process.

Syria's insistence on U.S. involvement would seem to strengthen Olmert's suspicions that Assad wanted peace talks, not peace, and that his main goal was to break out of an isolation imposed on his country and shift attention from the investigation of Syria's role in the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

There have been intensified Israeli military exercises on the Golan Heights, as a lesson from last year's Second Lebanon War that showed soldiers and commanders did not train enough.

The director of Israel's military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, last month told the Cabinet that Syrian talk of renewing peace negotiations was "very superficial." It was building a military capability, but the Syrian thinking is "defensive reactive," he added, according to a participant in that meeting.