Olmert could quit Golan for peacewith Syria

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appears increasingly open to talks with Syria as a newspaper reported on Friday that he is willing to withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for full peace.The mass-selling Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot said Olmert had informed President Bashar al-Assad of his readiness for withdrawal for peace in secret messages relayed to Damascus seven years after US-backed peace talks collapsed.Israel captured the strategic plateau from Syria 40 years ago, in the 1967 war. In 1981 it annexed the territory, now home to more than 15,000 Israeli settlers and more than 18,000 Syrians, mostly Druze.On April 24, during a secure phone conversation lasting more than an hour, Olmert apparently secured the green light from US President George W. Bush to examine whether peace talks with Syria could be renewed, Yediot said.He then secretly conveyed several messages to Assad via Germany and Turkey, signalling that in exchange for full peace with Israel, dissolving ties with Iran and “terror organisations,” Syria would receive the Golan.Olmert has previously ruled out any talks as long as Damascus continues to support militant groups like Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, whose exiled supreme political leader is based in the Syrian capital.“I know that a peace agreement with Syria requires me to return the Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty. I am willing to fulfil my part in this deal for the sake of peace between us,” Yediot quoted Olmert as informing Assad.“I would like to hear from you whether, in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, Syria would be willing to fulfil its part:To gradually dissolve its alliances with Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinianterror organisations, and to stop financing and encouraging terror.” US-brokered peace talks between the two sworn enemy countries broke down in 2000, over the return of the Golan.A spokesman for the prime minister, Yanki Galanti, said he could neither confirm nor deny the report in Yediot, the country's leading newspaper.Olmert is expected to discuss Syria with Bush when they meet in Washington on June 19, although on Wednesday the United States and Israel said after talks that the time might not be ripe for Israel to resume peace talks with Syria.Olmert said this week, after a security cabinet meeting devoted to the Syrian question, that Israel does not want war with Damascus and that this message had been passed to Damascus through various diplomatic channels.Israeli Trade and Industry Minister Eli Yishai told public radio on Friday he was ready to agree to territorial concessions to “spare Israeli lives”.He urged Assad to visit Jerusalem, as did Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who in 1979 became the first Arab leader to sign peace with Israel. In exchange, Israel returned the Sinai, also captured in 1967.Sadat was later assassinated by an Islamist angered over the peace deal