Clinton Says U.S. Is Ready to Begin Talks With Syria
JERUSALEM — Signaling a new direction in Middle East diplomacy, the Obama administration will send two senior officials to Syria this weekend to begin discussions with the government, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on a visit to Israel on Tuesday.
The overture suggests how the Obama administration intends to tackle three interlocking challenges in the Middle East: the nuclear threat posed by Iran; long-simmering tensions between Israel and Syria; and the grinding conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Syria, regional experts say, could be the key to alleviating all three.
By seeking an understanding with Syria, which has cultivated close ties to Iran, the United States could increase the pressure on Iran to respond to its offer of direct talks. Such an understanding would also give Arab states and moderate Palestinians the political cover to negotiate with Israel. That, in turn, could increase the burden on Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, to relax its hostile stance toward Israel.
But in a region where even small steps take years to negotiate, officials sought to tamp down expectations of rapid progress. “It is a worthwhile effort to go and begin preliminary conversations,” Mrs. Clinton said, noting Syria’s wide influence in the region, as well as its troubled history with the United States. Yet, she cautioned, “we have no way to predict what the future of our relations with Syria might be.”
The State Department declined to elaborate on the issues the emissaries would broach in Syria or why negotiators were going now.
The two emissaries are Daniel B. Shapiro, a senior director at the National Security Council, and Jeffrey D. Feltman, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. Mr. Feltman, a former ambassador to Lebanon, has extensive experience with Syria; Mr. Shapiro advised the Obama campaign on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Middle East experts say they believe that conditions for an opening to Syria are ripe on both sides.
“We’ve got a Syrian government that wants to engage,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel and a peace negotiator in the Clinton administration. “We’re likely to get an Israeli government that will find it easier to engage with Syria than with the Palestinians.”
There are clear benefits to Israel from better relations with Syria: the government of President Bashar al-Assad is a sponsor of Hezbollah, a militant group based in Lebanon, and provides a sanctuary for Hamas’s leaders in Damascus, Syria’s capital.
In May, Israel and Syria announced that they were in negotiations for a comprehensive peace treaty through Turkish mediators. Israel’s departing prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said he planned to brief Mrs. Clinton on those talks on Tuesday.
Benjamin Netanyahu, who is likely to become Israel’s next prime minister, will face pressure from the United States to move forward with the peace process. Mr. Indyk said that Mr. Netanyahu would find it more politically palatable to engage Syria than to alienate the settler movement by slowing or halting settlements as a concession to the Palestinians.
Nonetheless, Israeli public opinion polls show wide opposition to giving up the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 war. In his previous stint as prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu initiated peace talks with Syria, but they came to nothing.
The Obama administration has carefully laid the groundwork for the envoys’ visit. Members of Congress, including Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, have recently traveled to the region. Last Thursday, Mr. Feltman met with Syria’s ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha.
“We don’t engage in discussions for the sake of having conversations,” Mrs. Clinton said, after a meeting with the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni. “There has to be a purpose to them; there has to be some benefit accruing to the United States and our allies.”
The Bush administration largely shunned Syria, recalling its ambassador in February 2005, after the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Many Lebanese accuse Syria of involvement in the assassination, a charge it denies. A United Nations tribunal has begun proceedings in the case.
While Mr. Feltman was the ambassador in Lebanon, three people were killed when a car bomb exploded next to an American Embassy vehicle in Beirut in January 2008. Suspicions again fell on Syria.
Mr. Feltman and Mr. Shapiro are accompanying Mrs. Clinton on her first tour of the Middle East as secretary of state, which began Monday in Egypt, where she said the United States would pursue peace “on many fronts.”
Meeting on Tuesday with Israel’s leaders during a time of political transition, Mrs. Clinton reaffirmed the desire of the United States for an agreement that would create a separate Palestinian state side by side with Israel.
But she was plainly reluctant to step into a domestic political tussle. Mr. Netanyahu, who is likely to form a right-wing government in the coming days, has emphasized economic development in the West Bank over negotiations to create a Palestinian state.
“We happen to believe that moving toward the two-state solution, step by step, is in Israel’s best interests,” Mrs. Clinton said. “But obviously, it is up to the people and the government of Israel to decide.”
Ms. Livni said she embraced a two-state solution, a crucial difference between her Kadima Party and Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party, and one that has impeded Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts to form a coalition with Kadima. Mrs. Clinton met with Mr. Netanyahu on Tuesday.
She promised to consult Israel and other Middle Eastern countries as the United States develops its policy toward Iran. At a Gaza donors’ conference in Egypt on Monday, Mrs. Clinton told the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates that she did not believe that Iran would respond positively to the Obama administration’s offer of direct talks.
Ms. Livni said she had no qualms about the American offer, but she maintained that Israel’s Muslim neighbors were as worried as Israel by Iran. “They feel that Iran tries to undermine their regimes,” she said.
Mrs. Clinton also declined to publicly press Israel to open border crossings into Gaza; critics say that closing the crossings has impeded the flow of humanitarian relief. Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas took control of the territory in June 2007. It has allowed in aid since the end of the recent three-week assault on Hamas, but has not opened the crossings for many other goods.
On Monday, European officials said they expected Mrs. Clinton to raise the issue with the Israelis.
But she said: “It’s very difficult to solve this dilemma when Israel is under physical attack. We have a humanitarian challenge in Gaza, with a lot of innocent Palestinians who need the help, and Hamas decides to continue to rain rockets down on Israel.”
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