By Xinhua,
Tehran : Iran said on Saturday that Israel should withdraw from the occupied Golan Heights without setting any conditions, the official IRNA news agency reported.
“The Zionist regime (Israel) is not in a position to set conditions for withdrawing from Golan heights,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted as saying.
Under the current circumstances, Israel has no option but to withdraw from occupied lands including the occupied Palestinian territories, Mottaki said.
Mottaki made the remark at a joint press conference with exiled Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal at the Iranian Foreign Ministry building on Saturday.
During talks between Mottaki and Mashaal, the two sides “strongly condemned the Zionists’ atrocities and underlined the need to put an end to Gaza’s siege,” IRNA reported.
“We support freedom of Golan heights as well as other occupied lands and believe that Syria tries to retake its own land and is not to make a compromise on the rights of the Palestinian nation,” Mashaal was quoted as saying.
Israel and Syria almost simultaneously announced on Wednesday that they had begun dialogues under Turkey’s auspices with a goal of reaching a comprehensive peace, the first confirmation of diplomatic contacts between the two neighbors in eight years.
Peace negotiations between Israel and Syria broke off in 2000, when then Israeli prime minister and now Defense Minister Ehud Barak refused Syria’s request to fully withdraw from the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau Israel seized in 1967 and annexed in 1981.
Following the first round of renewed talks earlier this week, Turkish officials said both sides have understood that any future peace agreement would include Israel’s full withdrawal from the Golan Heights and Syria’s distancing itself from Iran and militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.