In unprecedentedly complimentary remarks, setting the stage for a historic reconciliation between two of the Middle East's most bitter enemies, President Assad of Syria has praised Israel's incoming prime minister, Mr Ehud Barak, as a strong, honest man, and one capable of achieving his policy objectives.
The Syrian President, who went to war against Israel in 1973 in a vain effort to recapture the Golan Heights, and who has balked at peacemaking overtures from a series of Israeli governments, indicated a new readiness for peacemaking with the newly elected government, evidently discerning in Mr Barak a prime minister with wider public support than his predecessors, and thus better able than they were to rally the Israeli electorate behind a Golan Heights-for-peace accord.
President Assad made his comments in conversation with his biographer, the British journalist Patrick Seale, who visited the region earlier this month, and who was granted lengthy meetings both with the Syrian President and with Mr Barak. While he said that working with Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, the defeated Israeli Prime Minister, had been "useless", the Syrian leader was quoted as saying in the interview, published by the Al Hayat newspaper, that Mr Barak was "a strong and honest man".
Israel's incoming leader, who is still finalising the composition of his coalition and so has not yet formally taken office, was "a leader who can deliver if he chooses", said President Assad. And clearly Mr Barak "wants to achieve peace with Syria". He was moving ahead at "a careful, studied pace".
In an accompanying interview, Mr Barak reciprocated the words of praise and optimism, complimenting President Assad for "building a strong, independent and self-confident Syria", and describing Syria as the "cornerstone" of any "lasting and comprehensive peace in the Middle East".
Mr Barak, when chief of staff of the Israeli army in the early 1990s, led abortive efforts at peacemaking with his Syrian counterpart. But President Assad hesitated when offered a peace accord by the late prime minister Mr Yitzhak Rabin, in part, apparently, out of a concern that the Israeli public, wary of relinquishing the strategic Golan ridge, might reject the deal in a promised referendum. Peace talks were halted altogether in early 1996.
Mr Barak has promised to revive the talks, and to negotiate a peace treaty with Damascus that would also see Israeli troops withdrawn from Lebanon within a year. He, too, has promised a referendum on any major withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
The Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, has cancelled a planned visit to Germany due to Israeli government-building talks, a Palestinian official said yesterday.
Mr Arafat cancelled his trip as talks on forming a new Israeli coalition government appeared to be in the final stretch. "It is a time of great tension," the senior Palestinian representative to Germany, Mr Abdallah Frangi, said of the coalition talks.