Britain sees "unprecedented opportunity" for Mideast peace

Aug 4, 2009, 15:46 GMT

Damascus - British Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ivan Lewis said Tuesday that there was an 'unprecedented opportunity' for a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

'We believe that there is now an unprecedented opportunity to resolve one of the oldest and severe conflicts in the world, the Middle East conflict,' Lewis told reporters after a meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem in Damascus.

Lewis said that this 'opportunity' came after US President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo last June.

Lewis said that peace could be achieved only with the establishment of a Palestinian state and guarantees of Israel's security.

Lewis asked Syria to use its influence to help achieve this goal, which he called 'crucial for peace and stability in the region.'

He further called on Syria and Israel to resume direct talks on the Golan Heights, a strategically important plateau at the border of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel that Israel occupied in the 1967 war, and said he hoped Arab countries and Israel would take steps to normalize relations between them.

Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last month in Aleppo.

Before he left, the prime minister restated Turkey's willingness to act as an intermediary in Syrian-Israeli peace talks.

'New requests regarding this process may come up,' Erdogan told reporters before he left for Syria. 'In fact, they have already started to come.'

Turkey had previously offered to broker Syrian-Israeli talks, provided they focus on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, a strategically important plateau at the border of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.

Turkey brokered several rounds of indirect Syrian-Israeli talks last year. Syria suspended those talks after Israel began bombarding the Gaza Strip in December.