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French President Nicolas Sarkozy (L with his Syrian counterpart Bashir al-Assad) winds up a two-day visit to Syria Thursday with a four-way summit including Turkey and Qatar aimed at boosting the roles of France and the European Union in Middle East diplomacy.
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PARIS (EJP)---French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a visit in Damascus, will hand Syrian President Bashar Assad a handwritten letter from Noam Shalit, the father of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas more than two years ago, addressed to his son, according to the Elysée presidential palace.
Sarkozy will request that President Assad pass the letter to Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal. The French president would like Meshal to then forward the letter to the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip.
According to daily Le Figaro, for political-diplomatic reasons the letter will go through a sinuous path because the Syrian president doesn’t want to be perceived as an official mediator between Hamas and Israel, a country with which Syria is formally in a state of war since 1948.
Sarkozy will hand over Noam Shalit’s letter to his Syrian counterpart who will then give it to the head of state of Qatar, cheikh Hamad ben Khalifa Al-Thani. The latest will finally deliver the letter to Khaled Meshaal, political bureau chief of Hamas, who lives in Damascus.
The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Sarkozy and and the emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani,are set to meet on Thursday in Damascus with Bashir al-Assad, in a step that symbolizes an increase in Syria's power in the region and the end of the isolation that has been imposed on it.
Turkey has been mediating since May in indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel, which remain technically at war since 1948.
Sarkozy said Wednesday that France would be prepared to support the peace process between Syria and Israel in any way the parties wanted. "France is ready to be a wheel among the wheels of the process when the time comes," he said while standing alongside Assad. "Everyone wants" the talks to be direct," Sarkozy also said.
Sarkozy is the first Western leader to visit Syria since the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a personal friend of the previous French president, Jacques Chirac.
