Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 28, 1994 TAG: 9410280091
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES AND
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Long
Israeli officials said progress, though small, had been made.
Assad defined, for the first time, his minimum requirements for a peace treaty - Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights and from Israel's self-declared ``security zone'' in southern Lebanon. In the past, he had implied he would not sign a treaty until all Arab-Israeli disputes have been settled, including such hotly controversial issues as the future of Jerusalem.
Clinton said Assad's word ``should be reassuring to the people of Israel and should encourage ... a greater willingness to pursue the peace process.''
Some of Assad's comments at a news conference Thursday did not sound reassuring, however. He angrily rejected suggestions that he should visit Jerusalem or make some other dramatic gesture. If the Israelis will not believe his word, he said, the peace process will collapse.
``There is nothing we have that proves our design for peace, except our saying that we want peace. And anyone who does not believe what we are saying, he would have no other way for peace. It would be he that does not want peace.''
Assad's outburst, with Clinton at his side, came just moments after the Syrian president asserted he was ready to negotiate a peace to enable ``Arabs and Israelis to live in security, stability and peace.''
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin expressed confidence Israel could overcome differences with Syria and Lebanon, the last two holdouts among Israel's neighbors. ``It might take time. One has to be patient,'' Rabin said. ``I believe that it will not take long and hopefully we'll find ways and means by which to overcome these gaps.''
While Clinton stressed that a peace treaty was not at hand, U.S. officials said they believed Assad showed new and promising signs of flexibility.
Clinton told the Knesset, "We have been urging President Assad to speak to you in a language of peace that you can understand. Today he began to do so.''
Israeli officials expressed disappointment that Assad did not publicly renounce terrorism. So did Clinton.
``I regret that President Assad did not take the opportunity to say to me in public what he said to me in private about his deep regret about the loss of innocent lives,'' an exhausted-looking Clinton said during a news conference with Rabin.
Clinton was criticized at home for visiting Assad, who has been widely condemned for sheltering terrorists.
``Everything the president said about [former military leader Raoul] Cedras in Haiti can apply to Assad in Syria,'' Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said Wednesday. ``He is more ruthless. He has killed more people. He runs a tighter police state. He subsidizes terrorists. I think it is a very bad position for the president to go to Syria.''
Clinton defended his trip. ``I felt if I was coming to the region I felt I had to go to Syria,'' he said. ``We did some good.''
But he got little public help from Assad in promoting a more peaceful outlook.
At their briefing, instead of condemning terrorism, a combative Assad told reporters that he and Clinton did not discuss terrorism as a separate issue during their nearly three-hour meeting.
Assad denied that Syria practices terrorism and challenged those in the room to name ``anything that proves that Syria has done a single terrorist act.''
A stern-faced Clinton then jumped in and said: ``I said, and I believe President Assad agrees, if we are going to have peace in the region ... then supporting those who try to undermine the peace that is made is inconsistent with that, particularly if they try to undermine it with terrorist tactics.''
Clinton is the first U.S. president to visit Syria since Richard Nixon in 1974. Since 1979, Syria has been on the State Department's list of countries that harbor terrorists or have encouraged terrorist attacks.
It is one of the Middle East's most brutal regimes, whose leader slaughtered up to 25,000 people during a 1982 uprising. Assad also is alleged to have supported the groups held responsible for the 1983-84 suicide bombings of two U.S. embassies and U.S. Marine headquarters in Lebanon that killed more than 300 Americans.
This year's State Department terrorism report credited Syria for furthering the Middle East peace process by persuading the radical Hezbollah group to stop its rocket attacks on northern Israel but said it had not halted Iran's resupply of Hezbollah via Syria. While citing Syria for supporting and offering haven to terrorists, the report said the country had moved to ``restrain the international activities of some of these groups.''
by CNB