WASHINGTON — Russia and the United States are tentatively planning a second Middle East peace conference, in Moscow in early 2008, with major parties hoping to begin a comprehensive peace effort that would include direct talks between Israel and Syria, according to U.S., Russian, Arab and European officials.
Syria’s delegate to this week’s talks in Annapolis, Md., said Wednesday that Damascus wants the Moscow gathering to begin negotiations between Syria and Israel over the Golan Heights, a border region seized by Israel during the 1967 war.
“It is our hope that we can revive the Syrian track in Moscow,” Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad said in an interview before departing Washington.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert indicated that he hoped at some point to resume talks with Syria, but cautioned that the time is not yet ripe.
He said Syria must change in its behavior, notably its support for Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah.
Olmert has exchanged messages with the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad over the past three months, including before and after the Sept. 6 Israeli airstrike on what experts say was a site of a nuclear program, Israeli and U.S. officials said.
The Syrian-Israeli track may be easier to solve than the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, analysts said, because it is limited to one issue: the Golan Heights.
The last peace effort conducted by the Clinton administration in 2000 came close to settling control of the territory.
The United States has been quietly working with Russia on a sequel to Annapolis, a senior State Department official said Wednesday, noting that the agenda remains unclear.
Bush concluded three days of intensive Mideast diplomacy by proclaiming the Annapolis conference a “hopeful beginning” to peace negotiations.
Appearing Wednesday in the Rose Garden flanked by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Olmert, the president said he assured both “that the United States will be actively engaged in the process, that we will use our power to help you, as you come up with the necessary decisions to lay out a Palestinian state that will live side by side in peace with Israel.”
In another follow-up to Tuesday’s conference, the Bush administration named retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, the former commander of NATO, to become a special U.S. envoy for Middle East security.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Jones will work with Israelis and Palestinians and help design a new U.S. plan of security assistance to the Palestinian Authority.
Jones won’t have a direct role in the multitrack negotiations, U.S. officials said, but will advise Rice on questions that inevitably will come up in the talks, such as how Palestinian forces can step up their role in the West Bank as Israeli forces reduce theirs. Jones’ job will be limited to security matters.
Jones served as the supreme commander of NATO from 2003 to 2006.
Last summer, he headed a committee that advised Congress on the readiness of Iraqi security forces.
The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
