President Assad: Golan will return to Arab hands

            After the foreign minister of Saudi flatly rejected US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's request that his country make goodwill gestures toward Israel, Syrian President Bashar Assad repeated his refusal to resume negotiations with Israel unless the country a-priori commits to ceding the Golan Heights. In an interview published Saturday in a Syrian military magazine's edition celebrating the 64th anniversary of the army, Assad said "peace and occupation are opposites that can never meet." He repeated the Syrian position that "returning all occupied territories to the 4th of June [1967, prior to the Six Day War] borders is not up for negotiation or discussion." He insisted that Syria wanted "a fair peace, but there is a great difference between an honest invitation to lay the foundations for peace according to the legitimate international resolutions and accepting Israel's demands," which, he said, "contradict the principles of peace." "The Syrian Golan will yet return to Arab hands," Assad promised. Syria lost the strategic plateau in the 1967 Six Day War and almost retook it in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, but was eventually defeated by the IDF which conquered the heights and has maintained a presence there ever since. The interview with Assad was published on the day when American sanctions against the country were extended by a year. The US decision came despite recent efforts by Washington to thaw relations with Damascus, which were frozen by the George W. Bush administration. (16,05)