President Assad reportedly hailed Israel's opposition leader as a "peacemaker"

Syria and Israel: Waging War or Making Peace?

Ambassador Eliahu Ben-Elissar was speaking at a meeting in Washington with American defence writers and journalists. He told the group that while Syria had declared itself ready for peace, "they are preparing for war."

Mr Ben-Elissar quoted Syria's military chief-of-staff as having recently said that "negotiations are not the only option".

And he warned that Israel's defence capacity was being eroded by a number of factors, claiming that "Egypt and the other Arab countries are getting today basically the same equipment as Israelis are getting."

The Ambassador's remarks coincided with a letter sent to President Assad by Ehud Barak, the leader of Israel's opposition Labour Party. Mr Barak wrote: "I hope that we will act together...and return to discuss peace, rather than exchanging words about confrontation and war, which recently have unfortunately come back to characterise the relationship between our two countries."

President Assad is reported to have responded by hailing Mr Barak, a former Israeli chief-of-staff, as a "peacemaker", slamming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as an "enemy of peace".

The President was handed the letter by a delegation of 42 Israeli Arab politicians on a visit to Syria. It was the first time that a delegation of Israelis - Jewish or Arab - have held discussions with high-level Syrian leaders.

Saleh Tarif, a Labour Party member of parliament and one of the delegation's leaders, said the Syrians had indicated that they wanted to work Israel's left-wing parties to push the peace process forward.

Under the previous Labour government of the assassinated Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel and Syria had been negotiating. The negotiations had focussed on an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, seized during the 1967 war, in exchange for Syrian guarantees of Israeli security.

The talks broke down after the Likud Party won Israel's 1996 election. Mr Netanyahu declared that he would not be bound by verbal understandings reached between the previous government and Syria.

Last week, Mr Netanyahu's office denied a report in the Yediot Aharonoth newspaper which said that the Prime Minister was ready to make concessions over the Golan which were commensurate with security arrangements for Israel.