Middle East News | Syria’s Assad in Paris for talks with Sarkozy.

Meeting likely to focus on Israeli-Syrian peace talks

Syria’s Assad in Paris for talks with Sarkozy

Assad’s visit comes at the heels of Netanyahu’s talks with Sarkozy

PARIS (Al Arabiya, AFP)

Syrian President Bashar al-Asad hailed a “climate of trust” with France ahead of a visit Friday for talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy on prospects for Israeli-Syrian talks.

“A year and a half after the resumption of good relations between France and Syria, we have first of all built a climate of trust and we can, now, elaborate a clearer vision for the future,” he told the paper.

Assad’s visit comes at the heels of talks between Sarkozy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu asked Sarkozy to pass a letter to Syria calling for the resumption of peace negotiations between the two countries, Al Arabiya TV reported citing a French source.

Relations between France and Syria have been warming since Assad paid a landmark visit to Paris last year for Bastille Day celebrations and Sarkozy visited Damascus two months later in Sept. 2008.

But the Syrian leader said that “we haven’t yet reached a revival of trust between Syria and the United States,” and called on Obama to do more for the stalled Middle East peace process.

“What President Obama said about peace was a good thing. We agree with him on the principles, but… what is the plan of action? The (peace process) sponsor must come up with a plan of action,” he said.

Assad also repeated his position that Damascus must review a partnership agreement with the European Union, which had been due to be signed in October, calling on the bloc to have “more political independence.”

“The Europeans have turned completely towards the United States, to Syria’s detriment. A partner must be a friend and we haven’t noticed that from Europe these last years,” he said.

Damascus and the EU first drew up the draft partnership pact in 2004 but it was never signed by European countries, amid concerns by some nations of rights abuse in Syria.

This entry was posted on November 13, 2009 at 9:06 AM and is filed under Iran / Israel War. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.