Syria’s Leader Says It Wants Faster Negotiating With Israel

Syrian President Hafez Assad, speaking in public for the first time since Syria agreed to resume talks with Israel, said Saturday that his country favors speeding up the peace process.

At a news conference after talks in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Assad said that Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres has also shown signs of greater flexibility.

“I believe that Peres wants to deal with more openness. . . . This is what the Americans told us, and this is what we concluded from his statements,” he said.

Syria agreed Dec. 16 to resume the talks after a meeting between Assad and U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher. The next round of talks will begin in Maryland on Wednesday.

The resumption, after a six-month break, has generated widespread optimism that Syria might start to catch up with the Jordanians and Palestinians, who already have agreements with Israel. But Assad was noncommittal about the prospects.

“It is difficult to predict specific matters. There is an agreement to resume talks and that they [the Syrian and Israeli negotiators] should explore the prospects for an agreement, but there is nothing specific,” he said.

Pressed on what had persuaded Syria to resume the talks, Assad said that his meeting with Christopher “confirmed an atmosphere of openness, which was better than in previous circumstances.”

“But nobody discussed with me any specific issue. There is nothing specific. There are some general ideas and general concepts, the aim of which is to accelerate the peace process, and Syria supports this,” he added.

The Syrian president, whose country stayed away from talks because of Israel’s demand for early warning stations on the Golan Heights, showed no signs of changing its policy against the stations or on its desire for full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan, captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War.