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UNITED NATIONS - Whether it was a chance encounter, an ambush at the men's room or a carefully staged first meeting, the UN ambassadors of Israel and Syria walked side by side and may have exchanged words for the first time yesterday.
Israel and Syria have been passing messages in recent months, largely through international mediators, to explore the possibility of resuming peace talks.
Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman told reporters he had shaken hands and spoken with his Syrian counterpart Bashar Ja'afari when the two met in a hallway outside the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
"That's the first time we spoke," said Gillerman, who has been Israel's ambassador since the start of 2003. The two were seen walking from near the men's room outside the Security Council into the antechamber of the council.
Asked whether they had discussed anything more significant than the weather, Gillerman said, "We did not discuss the weather." Asked if they had shaken hands, he said, "Yes."
Ja'afari, however, denied he had spoken to Gillerman.
"I wasn't walking with him ... he was following me," he told reporters.
"I didn't address him, I didn't talk with him." Asked if he had shaken hands, Ja'afari said, "Neither hands nor feet."
The encounter took place at a spot where reporters gather to speak to diplomats going in and out of the council.
An official at the Israeli mission said the two ambassadors met by chance while Gillerman was taking a group of Israeli schoolchildren on a tour of the United Nations.
"It was by chance," the official said. "He tried to explain something to the Syrian ambassador."
Talks between Syria and Israel collapsed in 2000 without resolving the fate of the Golan Heights, a plateau occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and annexed in 1981 in a move not recognised internationally. Both sides have signalled a readiness to resume talks in recent months.
In remarks broadcast on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Syria was setting an "impossible threshold" for peace talks by demanding Israel commit to withdraw fully from the occupied Golan Heights before negotiations resume.
- REUTERS
