Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says Israel and Syria have exchanged messages to clarify what each would expect of any future peace treaty, a newspaper reported Thursday.
The disclosure in an interview with the Yediot Ahronot newspaper was Olmert's strongest indication yet that Israel and Syria have been in contact. The Israeli leader has in recent months repeatedly expressed a willingness to resume peace talks, which broke down in 2000.
"They know what we want from them, and I know full well what they want from us," Olmert told the newspaper. Olmert did not disclose the content of the messages or provide other details about the contacts, the daily said.
"Israel is open to peace with Syria," Olmert told another newspaper, Maariv, in comments published Thursday.
He spoke with both newspapers in traditional interviews to the Hebrew press before the Jewish Passover holiday, which begins Saturday night.
Israeli Cabinet Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said last month that Israel was trying to get Syria to restart the talks.
Negotiations broke off after Syria rejected Israel's offer to return the Golan Heights, which it captured in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed.
Syria wanted Israel to withdraw to the prewar line on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. But Israel wasn't prepared to give up any control of lake that provides about half of the country's drinking water.
Despite the peace overtures, tensions have been high between the two countries in recent months, largely stemming from an Israeli air attack on a Syrian military facility in September. Some foreign reports have said the target was a nuclear installation Syria was building with North Korean assistance.
Damascus denies having an atomic program, and North Korea says it was not involved in any such project. Syria did not retaliate for the attack.
Both Syria and Israel have expressed a willingness to renew talks since Israel's war against the Lebanese-based Hezbollah militia in 2006. Olmert has insisted that if Syria is serious about peace, Damascus must withdraw its support for Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
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