DAMASCUS, Feb 7 (AFP) - Syria is ready to resume without precondition peace talks with Israel which were broken off in early 2000, an EU envoy said Monday a day before a major Middle East peace summit to which Damascus is not invited.
"The president told me -- he was very clear -- he is ready to resume peace negotiations with Israel without preconditions," EU envoy Marc Otte told reporters after talks with President Bashar al-Assad.
"I hope that the parties will find the way to reconnect."
Assad first announced late last year he was dropping all preconditions for returning to the negotiating table, abandoning earlier demands for the talks to take up where they left off -- with what Syria insists was a firm, if unwritten, commitment to withdraw from the whole of the Golan Heights.
But the initiative went unheeded by Israel amid mounting US pressure on the Damascus regime.
Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians will be attending Tuesday's peace summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
The strategic Golan Heights were seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and unilaterally annexed in 1981.
02/07/2005 14:28 GMT - AFP