Assad sees talks with Israel through Turkey: paper

DOHA (Reuters) - Syria is ready to negotiate with Israel through Turkey to "find common ground" for peace, but any direct talks must wait until a new U.S. president is elected, President Bashar al-Assad said in remarks published on Thursday.

Syria says it received word from Turkey that Israel was willing to give back the occupied Golan Heights in full in return for peace with the Arab state -- one of the issues that led decade-long negotiations to falter in 2000.

Turkish mediation started last April and had brought "positive details", Assad told Qatar's al-Watan newspaper.

"What we need now is to find common ground through the Turkish mediator," Assad said. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who Assad said had conveyed the Israeli message, is expected in Damascus on Saturday.

According to the newspaper's account of remarks by Assad, which it did not publish in full, he said that only Washington could sponsor such negotiations but the administration of President George W. Bush "lacked the vision and the desire" to push for peace.

"We must be cautious and careful in negotiating this issue, and perhaps with a future administration in the United States, and we can talk after that about direct negotiations," he said.

"There will not be any secret negotiations with Israel. They will be overt if they happen, and they will not be direct but through the Turkish side, and we will tackle the restoration of the land at the beginning to see the Israeli credibility," he said.

Syrian-Israeli talks collapsed in 2000 over the scope of an Israeli pullout from the Heights, occupied since 1967. Israel annexed the Heights in 1981 in a move condemned internationally.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "confirmed to the Turkish prime minister his readiness to return the Golan and we received this news a week ago. And after that, we heard Olmert's statement in which he said: 'We know what Syria wants and it knows what we want'", said Assad.

Commenting on reports on Wednesday about the Israeli offer, Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said: "I have nothing to add beyond what the prime minister said on Friday in his interviews with the Israeli press about his desire for peace with Syria."

Olmert, who has been vacationing in the Golan Heights during the week-long Passover holiday, told the daily Yedioth Ahronoth last week, in answer to a question on pulling out of the Golan, that he was working to achieve a "significant move" for peace with Syria.

As well as strategic high ground, the fertile Golan Heights ensure Israeli control of important water resources in the arid region, as well as land for vineyards, orchards and cattle-grazing.

Around 18,000 Israeli settlers live in the Heights among 22,000 Druze who consider themselves Syrians.

(Reporting by Lin Noueihed; Writing by Inal Ersan; Editing by Giles Elgood)