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Assad to Arab states: Let's talk
by ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday October 06, 2006 at 09:57 PM
KUWAIT CITY
Syrian President Bashar Assad called on Egypt and Saudi Arabia to return to holding summits with Damascus, according to an interview published Friday in a Kuwaiti newspaper.
Assad said in an interview in the daily Al-Anba that the three Arab countries "consult less now" and should work together toward helping the hundreds of millions of Arabs in region.
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"We hope that we go back soon to the idea of holding Syrian-Egyptian-Saudi summits like we used to do in the 1990s," Assad said.
Assad has been making attempts to align Syria with other Middle East heavyweights and play a stronger role in the region's politics.
He also has been trying to mend rifts with Egypt and Saudi Arabia since describing Mideast leaders as "half men" during a televised speech in August.
But Assad later claimed that he did not specifically mean the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, who had criticized Syrian-backed Hizbullah's capture of two IDF soldiers July 12 that sparked the Israeli assault on Lebanon.
On Thursday, Qatar's foreign minister held talks on the Palestinian situation Thursday with Assad and Hamas's exiled political leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus.
A Hamas official told The Associated Press that the tiny Arab emirate of Qatar came to Syria to try to end the standoff between Hamas and the Fatah Party in the Palestinian territories.
The official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the talks, said Qatar sought to "bring the point of view closer between Hamas and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas" and remove tension between the two sides.
Syria's official news agency SANA said Thursday that the Qatari Foreign Minister, Sheik Hamad Bin Jaber Al Thani, gave Assad a letter from the emir of Qatar on "the latest developments in the region and bilateral relations between the two countries."
It said the two sides discussed during the meeting "the latest on inter-Palestinian dialogue and the need to support Palestinian national unity at this sensitive time in the region."
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