JERUSALEM - Arab nations are participating in a key US peace conference alongside Israel because of the threat Iran poses to the Middle East, Israeli President Shimon Peres said on Tuesday.
"The most interesting aspect of this conference is the strong Arab participation around the same table (as Israel)," the veteran statesman and Nobel peace laureate told public radio.
"Iran, threatening and frightening with its radical policies, is the reason for this," he said.
"Many people are beginning to understand that the danger does not come from Israel but from Iran. Israel is not threatening anyone," he said.
In a coup for US diplomacy, 16 Arab states, most of which do not recognize Israel, were to attend a US Middle East conference opening later on Tuesday in the city of Annapolis along with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
The Islamic republic -- which has made non-recognition of Israel one of its main ideological themes -- has been isolated by the attendance at the meeting of its chief regional ally Syria as well as Saudi Arabia.
On Monday it chided Saudi Arabia for attending the meeting, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad telling Saudi King Abdullah in a telephone conversation that "I wish the name of Saudi Arabia was not among those attending the Annapolis conference."
Peres said Israel had been in contact with Syria, which has sent a deputy foreign minister to the Annapolis meeting.
"There are contacts, there are numerous (exchanges of) messages," he was quoted as saying by the Ynet news website.
Peace talks between Israel and Syria broke down in 2000 amid disagreements over the strategic Golan Heights which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and unilaterally annexed in 1981. The two nations remain technically at war.
jp/yad/kir
11/27/2007 13:21 GMT