| Reuters - Thursday, July 12 01:39 pm |  |
PARIS (Reuters) - Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni rules out resuming talks with Syria and believes Damascus poses a problem which must be tackled by the region, she said in a French magazine published on Thursday.
Her comments contrasted with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's recent offers of direct talks if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad cuts ties to Iran as well as Palestinian and Lebanese Islamist militant groups.
Interviewed last week by Le Nouvel Observateur, Livni was asked whether she could confirm rumours of a resumption in talks between Israel and Syria, a year after fighting erupted between Israel and Syrian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
"Absolutely not. Syria is pursuing the dangerous game it plays in the region. It is supporting Hezbollah, refusing the principle of independence for Lebanon and remains a threat," she said.
"Moreover, Damascus, which is still the regional centre of support for terrorism, is today associated with Iran in a partnership which also constitutes a danger."
Olmert this week repeated his offer of direct talks with Assad on returning the Golan Heights, captured in a war 40 years ago and annexed in 1981 in a move declared null by the U.N. Security Council.
United Nations special envoy Michael Williams told Reuters on Thursday that Syria had signalled a willingness to change its relationship with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas if progress were made towards a peace deal with Israel.
"For Israel, it is very clear, beyond the Israeli-Syrian dispute, peace with Damascus requires a clarification which concerns the whole of the region," Livni told Le Nouvel Observateur.
Livni also brushed off suggestions that it would be better for Israel to retreat from the West Bank as soon as possible: "It would above all run the risk of seeing the West Bank sink into civil war and resemble what Gaza has become."
