03/02/2010 Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Wednesday that Israel is not serious about its intentions to make peace with Damascus as evidenced by "its conduct which is leading the region to war."
The Syrian leader made those statements during a meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos in Damascus on Wednesday.
According to a report on Syrian state television, Moratinos told Assad that the urgent diplomatic issues of the Middle East will be at the top of the European Union's agenda. Spain assumed the rotating presidency of the EU.
Earlier on Wednesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem warned Israel on Wednesday about launching any war against his country, saying it would turn into a wider conflict. "Israelis, do not test the power of Syria since you know the war will move into your cities," Mouallem told journalists in the Syrian capital Damascus.
"Return to reason, follow the path of peace ... and implement the requirements of peace fairly and comprehensively," he told a media conference with visiting Spanish counterpart Miguel Angel Moratinos.
Mouallem had been questioned about comments made on Monday by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
"In the absence of a peace agreement with Syria, we might find ourselves in a forceful conflict that could lead to an all-out war," Barak's office quoted him as saying in a speech to senior officers on Monday.
The Syrian minister said such statements "heightened the risk of war in the region." "If such a war comes ... it will be widespread even if it is waged against (just) southern Lebanon or Syria," Mouallem warned, while excluding the chance of "peace negotiations being launched after such a war."
Moratinos, who visited the Zionist entity and the Palestinian territories on Monday and Tuesday, said he "had not heard the war drums beat" in the Jewish state.
"Instead, I heard about peace," he said, stressing that the European Union would keep up its efforts to revive the Middle East peace process.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in a meeting with Moratinos that "Israel was not serious in achieving peace and that everything showed it was working towards a war," according the state news agency SANA.
Syria and Israel held indirect talks mediated by Turkey in 2008 over the occupied Golan Heights, which was seized and later annexed by the Zionist entity after the 1967 Middle East war.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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