The Syria-Israel Peace Talks.

Erdogan is still stressing the importance of the peace talks between Israel and Syria, despite the fact that Olmert's government may not survive a corruption scandal implicating the Israeli PM. Both Erdogan and Assad know the chances of a peace deal with such a weak Israeli government this year are almost nil. But both need to keep talking about the peace process, with Assad to gain time until a new US administration takes over in Washington in January 2009 and Erdogan to get the Republican administration of George W. Bush and the EU to continue to pressure the Kemalists of Ankara against ousting the Neo-Ottoman government.

Indirect talks between Syrian and Israeli negotiators in Istanbul recently came eight years after former US President Bill Clinton failed to bridge the gap between the two in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. It is difficult to see how they would overcome the two sticking points which derailed the 2000 talks - control over Lebanese and Palestinian politics and a small strip of land on the shores of the lake Tiberias (Sea of Galilee).

Gulf News on May 28 quoted Dr 'Imad Fawzi al-Shu'aibi, head of the Damascus-based Data and Strategic Studies Centre and a man close to the Assad regime's intelligence, as saying he was "quite optimistic" about the prospect of a deal because a weak "Israel has realised that it cannot achieve peace without returning all the land it occupied from Syria" in the June 1967 war. He did not talk about the other sticking point, control over Lebanon and Palestine, which was far more important from the standpoint of Assad's "Greater Syria" project - a project Assad is pursuing through his Lebanon and Palestinian proxies, including the Shi'ite Amal movement of Speaker Nabih Berri and Hamas' Damascus-based leader Khaled Mesh'al (see news22LebUS-May26-08).

Shu'aibi added: "I am very optimistic about the future of peace in the region. Israelis have changed a lot since the July 2006 war with Hizbullah and have realised that the strategic balance has changed in favour of the other [Syrian] side". In January 2000, Clinton offered his views about peace in a "working paper" defining differences over the deal, which would return the Golan Heights to Syria. He was sure the then Israeli PM Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara' would sign a deal if they were serious about the peace regardless of Syria regaining access to Tibarias or not. No one talks about the "Greater Syria" project, which was to be a "top-secret matter" to be kept by the US, Syria and Israel even if they continued to fail to agree. This secrecy has been kept up to now.

Clinton in early 2000 told the negotiators: "A strip of land would not really matter. It is too small to stop a peace process". But for Syria, the 80-metre strip offers access to the sweet water needed to develop the adjacent area. For Israel, the return of the strip would mean removing the installations built over the lake to supply the towns and colonies and to keep Syria under constant surveillance - the Golan Heights being only about 50 km south of Damascus and overlooking much of Syria's flatlands.

The new round of talks were "encouraging", according to Turkish mediators on May 21-31. Shu'aibi said: "The Israelis have assured the Turkish officials that access to Tiberias lake will not be a problem and Syrians will be able to wash their feet in the lake". He never mentioned the Lebanon/Palestine dimension.

Israel, however, has put forth some conditions for peace: Syria should stop supporting Hizbullah and Hamas and cut ties with Iran. Syria rejected both conditions; on May 28 a Beirut expert in Syrian affairs told the LBC TV network the Assad regime will "never sever its links to Iran['s axis]... This is impossible, no matter what".

Gulf News quoted another Syrian expert, analyst Ayman Abdul-Nour, as saying access to Tiberias remained a sticking point, adding: "It is about land more than water. At this time water is not a problem". He said Turkey had promised to compensate Syria for any water shortage as a result of the peace deal by increasing the flow of Euphrates River, adding: "Turkey, which controls the flow of Euphrates into Syria and Iraq through a series of dams, can solve the Tiberias water issue. But the focus of talks now are what Israel labels as support to terrorist groups and alliance with Iran".

It is through Syria's alliance with the Iran-led axis that Assad has control over Lebanon and Palestine. To Assad, losing control over Lebanon and Palestine means exposing his regime to a potential coup d'etat - something Israel does not tolerate because a post-Assad Syria could potentially become a haven for Islamist extremists, both Iran-led Shi'ite militants and Neo-Salafi Sunnis who want to topple all regimes in the Muslim world.

Erdogan's Neo-Ottomans may want to see a Sunni caliphate revived in Turkey. But they will never have anything to do with the Neo-Salafis. Erdogan's Neo-Ottomans are Islamist modernisers, wanting to be the equivalent of the Christian democrats of Europe. Erdogan's party is particularly keen on joining the EU, a desire resisted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and other key EU players.

On May 28, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak called on Olmert to resign and for early elections to be held. Leading the Labour Party, Barak is competing for the PM post with Likud leader and former PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who also wants Olmert to quit. But Olmert resisted Barak's call and vowed to continue as PM. While Netanyahu is adamantly opposed to any Golan deal with Syria, Barak wants to have a peace treaty with Assad's regime - but only with him as PM of Israel. A serious rival for the PM post is Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, an attractive lady popular at home and abroad. Barak is proposing a coalition government under him to include the Likud.

Assad and Erdogan, for their part, were last week hoping that a weak government under Olmert may stay in power if the embattled Israeli PM shows progress in Turkish brokered peace talks with Syria. However, Assad wants to see the US involved in the talks and the Bush administration is not keen on such a role at this stage. So the best that Assad hopes is to gain time for another US administration to take over in early 2009.

Assad is also said to calculate that Israel under Olmert is too weak to have a war with Hizbullah in Lebanon and/or with the Syrian regime in Syria. Hizbullah leader Nasrullah said as much in his May 26 speech, which marked the eighth anniversary of Israel's military withdrawal from South Lebanon. On May 26, Nasrullah reiterated that Israel was on its way of "disappearing" from the map.

Erdogan's mediation role in the Lebanese crisis has been assumed in the background in line with that of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab regime. His chief co-ordinator in this on day-to-day basis is the Saudi-based Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu. An Arabic-speaking Turk close to the ruling AKP of Erdogan, Ihsanoglu attended the May 25 election of President Suleiman in Beirut and arranged the closed-door meeting between the Turkish PM and Prince Saud.

After the Hizbullah-Israel war ended on Aug. 14, 2006, Turkey sent troops to join UNIFIL-II in southern Lebanon along a buffer zone south of the Litani River. This zone, separating Israel from Hizbullah whose armed presence is not allowed to move beyond the northern bank of the Litani, now is policed mainly by EU forces and the LAF. This is under UNSC Resolution 1701 which ended the 34-war.

From Erdogan's standpoint, the Turkish contribution to UNIFIL-II was meant to underline the importance of the Neo-Ottoman's geo-strategic partnership with the EU. Turkey is a key member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which is led by the US and is the main collective defence force for European security. NATO has extended its role to Afghanistan, implying its GME reach with the US wanting Turkey to be part of the EU in due course, and has extended considerable assistance to Iraq after the invasion of the latter by the US.

Iran Expects Syria Peace Move To Fail: Just five days after the talks were made public, Syria's Defence Minister visited Tehran and was welcomed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called for an expansion of defence co-operation between the two countries. The visit suggests that Iran remains, in public at least, convinced that any talks between Israel and Syria are either unlikely to succeed or unlikely to damage its strategic alliance with Damascus. On May 28 Turkmani and his Iranian counterpart signed a new defence co-operation pact.

Iran's state-run IRNA said: "The two countries pledge their mutual support regarding territorial independence and integrity in terms of international and regional authorities". The accord called for the withdrawal of "foreign and occupation forces, which are the source of insecurity and instability in the region".

Real Adm Ali Shamkhani, Iran's former defence minister, believed opposition inside Israel made a deal unlikely, on May 29 quoted as saying: "This is a delaying game by Israel because it has got stuck between two killer options of going for war and failing, or [to] going for peace and handing over land".

Iranians privately doubt that Syria's real aim is to recover Golan. The FT on May 30 quoted a "former senior Iranian official who had dealt with Syria and Lebanon issues", as saying: "Golan is not the first priority for Bashar al-Assad because this crisis in fact helps his regime not to collapse". The FT quoted a Western diplomat as saying Tehran was upset with Turkey and doubted Iran was as relaxed about peace talks as it claimed, adding: "Iran would say they are not worried, wouldn't they?"