Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam began a 24-hour visit Saturday to Tehran to discuss the Middle East peace process, Palestinian opposition groups and developments in Iraq, Damascus sources said. Khaddam met with Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and gave him a letter from Syrian leader Hafez Assad, the sources said. His meeting with Rafsanjani focused on the Middle East peace talks, particularly between Syria and Israel. The two countries remain deadlocked over the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in 1967. Syria has demanded an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan, while Israel has refused to commit itself to a pullout until Damascus spells out its vision of future normal relations. The Syrian-Iranian talks also tackled the issue of Damascus-based Palestinian groups, including the radical Muslim organization Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Palestine, which oppose the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, the sources said. Israel and the United States recently complained that Syria has harbored a Hamas spiritual leader, alleging that he issued orders for an Aug. 21 bus bombing in Israel that killed five people and injured 107 others. A Hamas statement claiming responsibility for the attack was issued in Damascus. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, which has claimed several suicide bombings in Israel and the occupied territories, have said they operate from inside the occupied territories. Syria has denied any link with the bombings. Khaddam and Rafsanjani also discussed developments in Iraq, where the government has been rocked by the defection of two top aides as well as the continuing effect of U.N. economic sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the sources said.
Tensions have run high in Iraq after the Aug. 8 defection to Jordan of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s two top military aides and their wives, both daughters of the president. The sources said the discussions by Khaddam and Rafsanjani carried special importance because they preceded a Thursday meeting between Syrian, Iranian and Turkish officials, which is set for the Iranian city of Asfahan. That meeting was due to focus on developments in Iraq. All three of the countries border Iraq and hold talks twice a year to monitor developments in that country. Among their top concerns is Iraqi unity in the face of separatist moves by some sectors of the minority Kurdish population in the north and the Shiite Muslim community in the south.
