Shimon Peres

Jane K. reports that:

Shimon Peres gave a breakfast press briefing in London today where he said,

"I for one would like to see us negotiating with the Syrians, but again the Syrians are having a double approach. On the one hand they are hosting in Syria the leadership of Hamas, the most extreme part of it. They are helping Hezbollah and we are suspicious they are continuing to supply Hamas with arms. And another thing, another side they're talking about peace, but again with reservation. They say they are for peace but they wouldn't like to meet the Israelis. How can you do it? You can not make peace by proxy."

He also suggested that Syria was refusing to meet unless Israel first agreed to give back the Golan, and said that preconditions should not be put on negotiations as this goes against the spirit of negotiations (though this doesn't seem entirely in tune with Israel's own policy towards Hamas, or previous Palestinian governments for that matter...)