SYRIA-ISRAEL TALKS

Syria is ready to resume indirect peace talks with the new Israeli government on the basis of a total pullout from the Golan Heights, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said. He said the four rounds of Turkish-mediated talks held last year had been launched on the basis of three principles, but without preconditions. “A full agreement from Israel to a commitment to a withdrawal from the Golan Heights,” was the main point, Muallem said. The talk process was suspended when Israel, which seized the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war, waged a deadly offensive against the Palestinian Islamist Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip in December 2008-January 2009. Muallem said Syria is now ready to resume a land-for-peace process. However, last month a largely right-wing coalition headed by hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in the Jewish state and quickly ruled out a pullout from Golan in exchange for peace with Syria.