Syria "isn't ready" to make peace with Israel, a disappointed Mr Ehud Barak told members of his ruling One Israel party yesterday afternoon, in the wake of Sunday's failed summit in Geneva between President Clinton and President Hafez al-Assad of Syria. The Syrian al Ba'ath newspaper, for its part, blamed Israeli intransigence for the lack of progress.
One of the participants at the Geneva summit, the US Special Middle East envoy, Mr Dennis Ross, flew to Jerusalem yesterday to brief Mr Barak on the Assad-Clinton talks, at which the US President had tried, but failed, to woo Syria back to the negotiating table with Israel.
Mr Clinton's spokesman said after the summit that the gaps between the sides were too wide to warrant a resumption of direct Israeli-Syrian negotiations.
Mr Ross assured Mr Barak that the US would continue its efforts to broker terms for a resumption of talks, which were suspended in January, but there was no disguising the disappointment among both US and Israeli officials at the deadlock.
Syria is insisting, as a precondition for further peace talks, that Mr Barak publicly commit Israel to withdrawing from the entire Golan Heights to the border lines as they ran prior to the Israeli-Arab war of 1967.
Mr Barak is prepared to relinquish the Golan, almost to the 1967 lines, but his government would fall were he to make a public commitment to that effect at this stage.
Instead, he has been seeking to restart the peace talks, and to include the Golan withdrawal in the terms of an overall peace treaty, which would see Israel gaining normalised relations with both Syria and Lebanon in return for giving up the Golan.
Although Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, said yesterday that the Syrians might be playing tough as "a tactic" to extract greater concessions from Israel, especially regarding access to the waters of the Sea of Galilee, time is clearly running out.
Israel is committed to pulling its forces out of South Lebanon by July, whether or not peace talks with Syria and Lebanon have progressed by then.
Given that Syria is blaming Israeli stubbornness for the current deadlock, and that a unilateral Israeli pullout from Lebanon could exacerbate Israeli-Syrian tensions, prospects for peace in the next few months are now looking distinctly gloomy.
Reuters adds:
The Syrian Foreign Minister, Mr Farouq al-Shara, said Mr Clinton had brought no new Israeli proposals to the Geneva summit. But in comments to the Lebanese newspaper al-Safir Mr Shara said that efforts to restart the talks would continue.
He said Mr Assad had made clear to Mr Clinton he would never drop his demand for full return of the occupied Golan Heights.
"We cannot say the summit failed or succeeded. The Geneva meeting was part of US efforts, which will continue, to achieve a just and comprehensive peace," he told al-Safir.
"We were under no illusions [before the meeting] but still we were surprised to see that the US President did not bring anything new from Israel but rather he came asking Syria" to help Mr Barak "get out of his difficult position. We think he put himself in that position," he said.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr Selim alHoss, said yesterday that the outcome of the Geneva talks "showed that Israel is not ready for the settlement and was not considering peace as a strategic option". Lebanon, where Syria has 35,000 troops stationed and is the main power, watched the summit closely.
Mr Barak survived a no-confidence vote yesterday over the future of Jerusalem. The Knesset voted 50-30 with 13 abstentions to defeat the right-wing Likud opposition's motion, which attacked Mr Barak's peace policies.