http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080426/ap_on_re_mi_ea/syria_israel_1

Turkey’s prime minister arrived in Damascus on Saturday for talks with Syria’s leader on the prospects for a Syria-Israel peace treaty under Turkish mediation.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled to be in Damascus to open a Syrian-Turkish business forum. However, his visit gained added significance with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s announcement that he received an Israeli offer of full withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for a peace treaty.

Assad has said that Erdogan passed on the message that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is ready to return the disputed area and that he is looking to discuss details with Erdogan. The two were to meet later in the day.

Turkey has close ties with both Israel and Syria.

Assad said in an interview with the Qatari newspaper al-Watan published Thursday that Turkish mediation over the past year could lay the groundwork for direct talks with Israel.

Erdogan did not mention the Golan issue before his arrival, but he did say that Turkey was trying to get the leaders of Syria and Israel together, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

“If this yields positive results, efforts will begin to bring the leaders together,” he said.

Erdogan said Turkey’s mediation was part of wider efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.

The recent developments suggested progress in back-channel contacts between Syria and Israel, despite heightened tensions over turmoil in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip and a September airstrike by Israel against a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria.

Israel and Syria’s last round of direct talks broke down in 2000 over the details of Israel’s proposed withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which it seized in the 1967 Mideast War. Israel wanted to keep a small coastal strip around the Sea of Galilee to ensure its control of the lake’s vital water supplies, a demand Syria rejected.