Assad: Israel's loyalty oath racist
After meeting Turkish leader, Syrian president slams cabinet's approval of amendment to Citizenship Act, says Arabs 'really want peace process but Israel working in opposite direction.' Erdogan says Israel must apologize for 'execution' aboard Turkish ship
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accused Israel on Monday of working against peace between their countries, despite Western efforts to help negotiations resume.
"There are ideas being put forward by some countries. They are preliminary and we do not know if they will push the process forward for not ... the atmosphere is not positive," Assad told reporters after meeting Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in the Syrian capital Damascus.
"The Arab side really wants the peace process and the Israeli side is working in the opposite direction," he added.
Assad was referring to US and French moves to relaunch Syrian-Israeli talks which broke off in 2008 without a deal.
Assad also addressed Israel's approval of the loyalty oath bill, under which non-Jewish prospective citizens will be required to pledge allegiance to a "Jewish and democratic" state. "The racist decision coming out of Israel express the Israeli fascism which manifests itself in killings and laws such as these," he said.
'Israel hindering peace process.' Erdogan (L) and Assad (Photo: AP)
Erdogan chose to address the deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish ship in late May, saying Israel "must officially apologize for the operation against the 'Marmara' vessel in international waters and compensate the families of those who were executed by being shot at very close range. This is what the medical and pathology reports showed.
Damascus has stuck to its demand for a total Israeli pullout from the Golan, a strategic plateau that Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.
Indirect talks were being mediated by Turkey, whose ties with Israel worsened this year after a deadly Israeli attack on an aid ship carrying Turkish activists, who were heading for the Gaza Strip in defiance of an Israeli blockade.
Assad last month separately met US envoy George Mitchell, who is trying to rescue Israeli-Palestinian talks, and Jean-Claude Cousseran, who was appointed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to pursue the so-called Syrian-Israeli track.
Israel, which wants Syria to distance itself from Iran and Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah, insists on talking to Syria without preconditions.
Almost 10 years of face-to-face talks between the two countries that were being supervised by the United States collapsed in 2000 after Assad's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, turned down an Israeli offer that fell short of returning the whole of the Golan.
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