Efforts under way for Israel-Syria talks, says Bashar al-Assad

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Mediators are working to relaunch peace talks between Syria and Israel, President Bashar al-Assad said on Sunday.

"There are efforts being made in this direction and they are not new. The Israeli side knows full well what Syria would or would not accept," Assad was quoted as telling a meeting of the ruling Baath Party's command.

Assad did not identify the mediators but diplomats in the Syrian capital said Turkey had been relaying messages between Damascus and Israel.

Negotiations between the two countries collapsed in 2000 over the scope of a proposed Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, seized by Israel in 1967.

International attempts to persuade Syria and Israel to resume talks foundered with the two sides attaching conditions to a return to the negotiating table.

Syria wants Israel to commit to a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights and prefers the United States, Israel's chief ally, to oversee the talks. Israel wants Syria's ties with Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to be on the agenda.

Casting himself as a champion of Arab rights, Assad said Syria would remain "a country of resistance and opposition" to what Damascus regards as aggressive U.S. and Israeli policies in the Middle East.

"The more steadfast we are the more fierce the campaigns against us become," he said, according to the state news agency.