Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem stated his country was prepared to relaunch peace talks with Israel and rejected a "military solution" to the conflict, according to remarks broadcast on Wednesday. "We are ready to restart peace negotiations on the Syrian peace track and are not opposed to progress along the Palestinian track," Muallem said in an interview, according to extracts broadcast by Arab television station Al-Arabiya.
"We do not wish for a military solution for Israel," Muallem said. "That is why we took part in the Madrid conference in 1991, we have had 10 years of peace talks with the Israelis... and we were at Annapolis," he said referring to the US meeting in November that relaunched the Israeli-Palestinian track.
Israeli and Syrian leaders both said last year that they were open to restarting peace talks.
