May 28, 2009, 11:47 GMT
Damascus - A delegation of US lawmakers met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other senior officials in Damascus Thursday morning, sources close to the Syrian government and western diplomats said.
Senator Ted Kaufman and Congressman Tim Walz will also meet with Syrian political and military officials and with representatives of civil-society organisations, western diplomats told the German Press Agency dpa.
They will likely discuss US and regional efforts to revive stalled peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians ahead of US special Middle East envoy George Mitchell's planned visit to Syria next month, the sources added.
The visit was the latest step in a diplomatic dance between Damascus and Washington. In comments to Syrian state television last Friday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem seemed to leave a door open for greater cooperation with the United States.
'Our country is looking to cooperate with the United States for the sake of the security and stability of the region,' al-Moallem said.
'If there's a realisation that what the Bush administration did with regard to the Arab countries and the issues that concern them was a mistake, then this mistake should be corrected - not by words, but by deeds,' he said.
Those comments marked a shift from the indignation Syria's state press expressed after US lawmakers voted to renew sanctions on Damascus on May 7, hours after Jeffrey Feltman, US deputy assistant secretary of state for Middle Eastern affairs, visited Damascus.
But while the Syrian press protested the renewal of the sanctions, it also tried to downplay the vote's significance, calling it 'routine.'
Syrian political analyst Sami Mubayad on Thursday urged the White House to take concrete measures to back up its diplomatic overtures.
'Obama has been in the White House since January 20. There cannot be dialogue just for the sake of dialogue. Results have been slow to come, and so there is caution from the Syrian side,' he told dpa.
Mubayad said he expected the Syrian government would ask the United States 'to pressure Israel to accept a just and comprehensive peace, in line with international resolutions.'
Kaufman and Walz were in Israel on Wednesday, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told them he hoped the Israeli and US governments could come to an agreement to 'allow normal life to continue' in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
'Syria takes the discouraging discourse from Netanyahu and (Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor) Lieberman seriously,' Mubayad said.
In remarks to representatives of the 57 member states in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference meeting in Damascus on Saturday, al-Assad said that Syria and Arab countries would prefer peace with Israel, but 'a peace based on the full return of occupied lands.'
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