KEY POINTS:
JERUSALEM - Israeli officials yesterday confirmed that the Foreign Ministry knew about a series of secret peace talks in Europe between Syrians and an Israeli team headed by one of its former top diplomats.
The teams discussed Israel handing back the Golan Heights - which it has occupied since the Six Day War in 1967 - to Syria under a formula providing for President Bashar Assad to stop giving support to Hamas and Hizbollah and distance his regime from Iran.
The revelation that Israelis and Syrians held seven separate meetings up to last August - after the start of the Lebanon war - has fuelled an already vigorous debate in Israel's security establishment over whether President Assad's recent peace overtures should be taken seriously.
The Israeli interlocutors included Dr Alon Liel, former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and the talks were attended by a "mediator" from an unidentified European country. The Syrian representative was Ibrahim Suleiman, who lives in the US and has American citizenship.
The talks were revealed yesterday in the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, which said that both the European mediator and Suleiman held eight separate meetings during the process with senior Syrian officials, including Vice-President Farouk Shara, Foreign Minister Walid Mualem and a general in Syrian intelligence. The paper says that the talks were finally halted last year because Israel rejected a Syrian demand to make the talks official at the level of director-general and deputy minister.
Amid a welter of official denials in Jerusalem that the contacts were anything but an unofficial freelance operation unsanctioned by the Government and claims in Damascus that the report was "baseless", an Israeli official acknowledged that the Foreign Ministry had been informed of the talks but insisted that Liel had not been in anyway "mandated" to conduct them.
According to a "non-paper" discussed between the two parties - diplomatic language for a unsigned document without legal status - and printed in Haaretz, the Israelis and Syrians envisaged Israel's acknowledgment of Syrian sovereignty "based on" the June 4, 1967, line but with the border to be "determined by both parties" with the sanction of the US and the UN.
The draft provides for Israel to retain control over the waters of the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee while much of the Golan would become a "park" open to tourism, supervised by Syria but with free access for Israelis. Under the proposals there would be a demilitarised zone on each side of the border.
As in the previous open - and eventually abortive - negotiations with Syria during the previous decade, the draft provides for an early warning station on Mt Hermon operated by the US to enforce the demilitarisation.
The document does not mention any commitments by Syria to halt support of the "rejectionist" Palestinian organisations - Hamas and Islamic Jihad - or of Hizbollah as a military force.
But Haaretz quotes Geoffrey Aaronson, of the Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington, who was involved in the talks, as saying that an agreement "under American auspices" would have called on Syria to ensure Hizbollah would function only as a political party.
Aaronson told Haaretz that the Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal would have had to leave Damascus. The newspaper said the process started in January 2004 when Assad indicated an interest in talks with Israel to Turkish officials who passed the message on to Liel, who was then asked to put out "discreet feelers" to the bureau of the Prime Minister at the time, Ariel Sharon. It adds that Jerusalem had no objection to Liel talking to Syrian contacts but there should be no negotiations.
The paper says the "reason (or excuse) was that the Americans are not prepared to hear about contact with Syria".
But while the Turkish-inspired talks failed, they were resumed in autumn 2004 under the auspices of "a European capital" which provided funding and a mediator for further talks, and that Liel gave a full report to the Israeli Foreign Ministry after each meeting.
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, who has resisted calls to open negotiations with Syria, said yesterday: "No one in the Government was involved in this matter. It was a private initiative on the part of an individual. From what I read, his interlocutor was an eccentric from the US, someone not serious or dignified."
Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said it was "not routine" but "not uncommon" for academics or non-government organisations from countries such as Syria and Israel to speak to each other.
THE WAY FORWARD
* An agreement of principles will be signed by the two countries, and following the fulfilment of all commitments, a peace agreement will be signed.
* Israel will withdraw from the Golan Heights to the lines of June 4, 1967. The timetable for the withdrawal remains open: Syria demanded the pullout be carried out over a five-year period, while Israel asked for the withdrawal to be spread out over 15 years. At the buffer zone, along Lake Kinneret, a park will be set up for joint use by Israelis and Syrians. The park will cover a significant portion of the Golan Heights.
* Israel will retain control over the use of the waters of the Jordan river and Lake Kinneret.
* The border area will be demilitarised along a 1:4 ratio (in terms of territory) in Israel's favour.
* Syria will also agree to end its support for Hizbollah and Hamas and will distance itself from Iran.
- INDEPENDENT
