U.S. & World News

DAMASCUS, Syria (CBS News) ― Key Middle East player Syria has finally agreed to attend next week's U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference in Annapolis.

CBS News producer George Baghdadi, reporting from Damascus, said it had accepted the invitation after the United States agreed to its primary demand: putting the question of the Golan Heights on the agenda.

The statement, carried by the state-run SANA news agency, said Vice Foreign Minister Faysal Miqdad will head the Syrian delegation, giving no further information.

In related news, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Sunday his country was interested in boosting bilateral relations with neighboring Iraq in financial and banking fields, a presidential statement said.

President Assad reviewed in a meeting with visiting Iraqi Finance Minister Bayan Jabr al-Zubeidi the outcomes of his four-day official visit to Syria and the agreements signed as part of the visit.

The statement added that President Assad "stressed necessity of enhancing the bilateral relations between the two sisterly countries in financial, banking, taxes and customs duties."

Earlier, Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Ottri discussed with Mr. al-Zubeidi "aspects of the bilateral cooperation in economic, development, oil, gas and energy fields."

An official statement said the Premier "stressed Syria's keenness on Iraq's security, stability and supporting the underway political process among Iraqi brothers to maintain their country's Arab identity and sovereignty."

The latest development come on the eve of the Mideast summit in Annapolis. The United States came under increasing pressure to allow Syria to raise the issue of the Golan, captured by Israel from Syria in 1967, after Arab foreign ministers put their weight behind the request following a meeting in Cairo.

The Syrians know well the spoiler role they can play in the region and have used that as leverage - knowing that the conference, the first chance in years to begin a dialogue between the Arabs and Israel, will not be as credible if the chair for Damascus is empty.

Syria fully understands that the meeting is mainly intended to launch Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations after a lull of seven years, but any discussion on the Golan would mean recognition it was not any more internationally isolated.

Despite Syria's demand for the Golan to be on the agenda, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Sunday made it clear the Arab nations should not expect to dictate the contours of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Livni spoke days after Arab League members grudgingly agreed to send their foreign ministers to a much-anticipated U.S.-hosted conference meant to renew Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after a
violent, seven-year lull in negotiations.

On the plane carrying Livni and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the U.S., Livni suggested that a lack of Arab backing contributed to the failure of the last round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which broke down in bloodshed in early 2001. The Arab world, she said, "should stop sitting on the fence."

"There isn't a single Palestinian who can reach an agreement without Arab support," she said. "That's one of the lessons we learned seven years ago."

But she also said that "it is not the role of the Arab world to define the terms of the negotiations or take part in them."

Arab states had been reluctant to attend the gathering, which begins Monday night in Washington, then moves to Annapolis, Maryland. They feared it would give Israel a public-relations boost while yielding the Palestinians little political benefit.

But they decided to come to the first large-scale Arab-Israeli gathering since a 1996 meeting in Egypt, largely because they wanted to bolster moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and keep him from making damaging concessions to Israel in talks that are to follow the conference. Abbas has been badly weakened internally by the Islamic Hamas group's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June, which left him in control of the West Bank alone.

The Arab League has proposed a sweeping Mideast peace proposal that would offer normalized ties with Israel if the Jewish state cedes all land captured in the 1967 Mideast war and agrees to a solution for Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in Israel following its 1948 creation.

Israel, which opposes a complete territorial pullback and the repatriation of Palestinian refugees to Israel, initially rejected the Arab proposal when it was first presented in 2002. But over the past year Olmert has said it could be useful in new Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian delegations were making a last-ditch effort in Washington to nail down an elusive joint vision of where peace talks would head after this week's gathering.

The Palestinians want the joint statement to address, at least in general terms, the core issues at the heart of the conflict with Israel: final borders, conflicting claims to Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

Israel, however, wants a broader and vaguer statement that would allow more room for maneuvering. It says the haggling on these explosive issues should take place in the closed-door talks that are to begin after the conference concludes on Wednesday.

"I hope Annapolis will allow the launching of serious negotiations on all the core issues that will lead to a solution of two states for two peoples," Olmert told reporters on the plane.

As he headed to the U.S. on Saturday, Abbas acknowledged that negotiations on the joint statement were in trouble.

"The positions with the Israelis before Annapolis are still far apart, and the negotiations are still ongoing," Abbas said in comments published Sunday in the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam.

Despite the differences, Abbas said he was committed to doing everything possible to hammer out a peace agreement in the coming year. Both Israel and the U.S. have said they hope to clinch a deal before the end of President George W. Bush's tenure in January 2009.

"We will exert all efforts to achieve peace within this period," Abbas said.

A high-placed Israeli official said attempts to forge a joint statement would continue in Washington. "We haven't given up yet," he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss confidential talks.

Livni told reporters "there is no reason" such a statement shouldn't be issued, but quickly played down its significance by adding, "Naturally, this would be a statement that would launch the process but not resolve the conflict."

Livni noted that a conference session on the search for a comprehensive Mideast peace gives the Syrians a forum to press their position on the Golan, even though the issue is not explicitly mentioned on the conference agenda.

On the plane, Olmert restated his position that Israel would "favorably" consider negotiations with Syria if conditions ripen.

Israel wants Syria to break out of Iran's orbit and stop harboring Palestinian and Lebanese militants opposed to the Jewish state's existence.

Israeli officials have reported high-level talks between Israel and Damascus meant to sound out Syria on the prospect of resuming negotiations, which broke down in 2000.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)