WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will travel to Damascus next month to try to convince Syrian strongman Hafez al-Assad to begin peace talks with Jerusalem, Israeli sources told The Post last night.
Albright also will visit several other Mideast countries as part of a new push for peace between Israel and its neighbors.
President Clinton, completing a series of lengthy talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, yesterday said they had formed a “new partnership” in search of Mideast peace.
Clinton emphasized that Syria has “a golden opportunity” to finally reach peace with Israel.
Syria has been under U.S. pressure for years to normalize relations with Israel.
Clinton, who said he has had regular contact with Assad for six years, was expected to phone him soon to underline the significance of Barak’s push for peace.
The United States will support Israel’s desire to start talks from scratch, Israeli sources said.
Syria wants the talks to begin where they left off several years ago, with Israel offering to return the Golan Heights, which it seized during the 1967 Six-Day War.
The strongest indication yet that Assad wants peace came from a Reuter report that his vice president had asked several Palestinian radical groups based in Damascus to halt their armed struggle against Israel.
The groups were told to disarm and become political parties because Syria intends to reach peace with Barak’s government, the report said.
Barak said he had no confirmation of the report, but said, if true, it is “a positive sign.”
During their Washington summit, Clinton and Barak discussed restructuring American aid to Israel, but most of the money, such as $1.2 billion to carry out the Wye Plantation agreement, already had been promised to Barak’s predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The money was delayed after Netanyahu halted compliance with the Wye terms, and is now being offered to Barak, officials said.
Even Clinton’s promise that an Israeli astronaut will enter space for the first time on a NASA flight was something he had promised Netanyahu’s predecessor, Shimon Peres.
Barak also acknowledged that, like Peres and Netanyahu, he wants convicted spy Jonathan Pollard to be released from a U.S. prison.