Word: syrians
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Bill Clinton believes that stalemate was broken last week in Geneva after he met for more than five hours with Syrian President Hafez Assad. Speaking to the press afterward, Assad declared, "We want a genuine peace which secures the interests of all sides and renders to all their rights. If the leaders of Israel have sufficient courage to respond to this kind of peace, the new era of normal, peaceful relations among all shall dawn." As he flew home, Clinton insisted that Assad's statement was a significant step forward. "I think he has reached a conclusion that...
...wisdom of engaging in a negotiation that will require Israel to give up most or all of the Golan Heights at a time when Israelis are still digesting territorial concessions to the Palestinians, the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was looking for a bolder, plainer statement of Syrian intentions. The usually optimistic Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, found the public remarks "too positive to be disappointing, but too general to be satisfactory...
...Rabin was also deeply concerned that Assad had offered no new assurances about security arrangements if Israel does withdraw from the Golan Heights. Rising in a steep escarpment to a height of 2,970 ft. on the Syrian-Israeli border, the Golan commands all the low ground that constitutes northern Israel. Syria repeatedly shelled Israeli kibbutzim from the Heights in the 1960s. Not a shot has been fired there since Henry Kissinger brokered a troop- separation accord in 1974, but poised on both sides are thousands of tanks, a bristling reminder of the state of war that has existed between...
...Arafat to accept Israel's offer. Mubarak, facing his own troubles with Muslim fundamentalist terrorists, is known to fear a surge in Palestinian support for the extremist Hamas movement in the occupied territories if the P.L.O. fails to reach agreement with Israel. President Clinton's mid-January summit with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Geneva is sure to bring renewed pressure on Arafat as well. Optimists assume that, in the end, the Israelis and the P.L.O. will agree on a formula that allows Palestinian self-rule to proceed, if only because the alternative -- increased violence -- is unacceptable...
...Jerusalem may resume peace talks as early as January. Syria broke off the U.S.-sponsored negotiations in September. In signs of conciliation, President Hafez Assad last week announced that Syria would help investigate the fates of seven Israeli soldiers missing in Lebanon since the 1980s and also said Syrian Jews would be issued exit visas by the end of December. Assad will meet President Clinton in Geneva in mid-January...