Israel asks Pelosi to tell Syria to stop backing terrorism

JERUSALEM — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will tell Syrian leaders when she visits Damascus this week on a trip criticized by the Bush administration that Israel will engage in peace talks only if Syria stops supporting Palestinian militants, Israel said Sunday.

The message came during Pelosi's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during the Israel part of her Mideast tour.

Israel and Syria are sworn enemies, though peace talks came close to success in 2000 before breaking down. Israel charges that Syria-based Palestinian militants are directing violence against it from the West Bank and Gaza.

Washington also considers Syria a sponsor of terror and had asked Pelosi not to visit Damascus.

"I think most Americans would not think that the leader of the Democratic Party in the Congress should be meeting with the heads of a state sponsor of terror," White House counselor Dan Bartlett said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Pelosi said Sunday she will raise the issue of two Israeli soldiers captured by the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah and a third captured by Palestinian militants last year with Syrian President Bashar Assad when she meets with him.

Pelosi's trip with six other lawmakers also includes stops in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

Three Republican congressmen — Frank Wolf, Joe Pitts and Robert Aderholt — were in Syria on Sunday, where they met with Assad. They said they believed there was an opportunity for dialogue with the Syrian leadership.

Pelosi and Olmert talked "extensively" about a Saudi peace plan, dormant since 2002 and relaunched last week at an Arab League summit, the Israeli prime minister said.

Olmert has welcomed the plan, which calls for a recognition by all Arab states of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territories captured in 1967 as a "revolutionary change."

On Sunday, Olmert invited Arab leaders to a regional peace conference, saying he hoped for an exchange of views about solving the Mideast conflict.

There was no immediate reaction from Arab leaders.

The Saudi initiative, a five-year-old plan revived last week at a meeting of Arab nations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, also demands that Israel recognize the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants.

Olmert made it clear Sunday that his reservations about the terms demanded of Israel had not softened. But his openness to a regional summit was unexpected, given Israel's skepticism about the plan and its historic aversion to multilateral peace talks in which the Jewish state would be outnumbered.

The U.S. delegation, which includes the first Muslim member of Congress, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., is scheduled to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today.

Information from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.