Syria has condemned Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s statements this week that negotiations between the two countries have reached a standstill because Syria does not want to make peace.
The Syrian newspaper Tishrin wrote this week that Damascus has time and again said it is ready to make peace, but Israel refuses to implement U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for it to withdraw entirely from the Golan Heights.
Rabin also stated on Tuesday that he would support any further attempts by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher to broker a peace with Syria.
He noted, however, that the United States could do little more to bridge the gap between Jerusalem and Damascus.
In Washington on Wednesday, Christopher attempted to downplay Rabin’s negative assessment of the status of the negotiations.
After traveling to the Middle East twice in May for rounds of shuttle diplomacy intended to get Israel and Syria back to the negotiating table, Christopher had stated he was pleased with the progress of the stances adopted by Jerusalem and Damascus.
On Wednesday, a State Department spokes- person said Christopher has not yet decided when he will return to the Middle East, adding that no plans for a future trip had been made or canceled.
The spokesperson did not know when a decision would be made on when Christopher would return to the region for further talks.
Earlier this week, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa charged that Israel was intransigent.
“I think Rabin must have made a mistake. He must mean Israel does not want peace,” he said.
According to Sharaa, who was attending a conference of non-aligned nations in Cairo, the American failure to bridge differences between Syria and Israel was “due to Israel’s stubbornness at the Washington peace talks.”
Rabin this week said that those talks, which were suspended by Syria in the wake of the Feb. 25 massacre of Palestinians in Hebron, were “empty of all content.”
‘WE HAVE NO CHOICE’
Rabin has been urging Syria to attend secret negotiations with Israel similar to those which led to the signing of the Palestinian self-rule accord last September in Washington.
Speaking in South America this week, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres rejected Syria’s criticism of alleged Israeli obstinacy and said that progress in the talks was “a matter of time.
“I am sure that we will make peace with Syria. The question is how to do that in the shortest possible time,” he said.
For his part, Peres criticized the Syrians for attempting to conduct negotiations along “a very narrow track.”
But, Peres continued, “We have no choice but to make peace.”
Environment Minister Yossi Sarid of the left-wing Meretz bloc said that true peace with Syria might lead to a situation in which Israel would perhaps relinquish sovereignty over the Golan but retain a presence there.
(Contributing to this report was JTA correspondent Steven Weiss in Washington.)
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