JERUSALEM, 27 December 2007 — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told visiting US lawmakers he was interested in restarting peace talks with Syria but was awaiting a signal from Damascus first, one of the lawmakers said yesterday.

“It is the proverbial story of chicken and egg, what comes first?” Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania told reporters one day after meeting with Olmert in Jerusalem.

Olmert has for months passed messages to Syria through third parties, including US lawmakers, seeking assurances peace talks would lead Damascus to sever ties with Hamas, in control of the Gaza Strip, with the Hezbollah group in Lebanon and with Iran, Israeli officials said.

Specter said his visit to the region would include talks in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Syria took part in a US-sponsored conference on Palestinian statehood after Washington agreed to allow discussion on the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed in a move not recognized internationally.

Olmert told Specter and Democratic Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island that he was “interested” in renewing peace talks, which collapsed in 2000 without resolving the fate of the Golan, but that “he is looking for a signal from Syria,” according to Specter.

Specter said Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Al-Mekdad told him on the sidelines of the Annapolis conference last month that “Syria is interested in negotiations.”

Kennedy said he would tell Assad that he was “mistaken” if he believed he could wait until US President George W. Bush, a Republican, leaves office in January 2009 in order to get a better deal should a Democrat be elected.

“If he thinks there’s going to be some ability for concessions, or less resolve ... he is going to be mistaken in that approach,” Kennedy said.

Assad has set his own preconditions for revived talks with Israel: Olmert’s commitment to a full withdrawal from the Golan.

Tensions flared between the neighbors when the Israeli air force carried out a strike inside Syrian territory on Sept. 6. Some US officials have linked the raid to suspicions of secret nuclear cooperation between Damascus and North Korea. Syria and North Korea have denied any nuclear ties.

Mohammed Mar’i adds from Ramallah: The Israeli foreign minister said in a new intelligence assessment that Syria is interested in peace agreement with Israel but is waiting for the next United States administration to take over in 2009 in order to initiate talks.

The ministry’s yearly assessment was presented to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday by Nimrod Barkan, director of the ministry’s Center for Policy Research.

According to the report, the Syrians do not believe that negotiations will be able to advance as long as President Bush is in office, and therefore prefer to wait until the end of his term, hoping that the next administration will be willing to renew talks with Damascus and will give its blessing to Syrian-Israeli negotiations.

Barkan told the committee that, “Damascus is interested in an agreement with Israel, but only according to Syria’s conditions and with American involvement.”

“The Syrian surface-to-surface missile threat has increased in the past year,” he added. “Israel’s deterrence against Syria and Hezbollah still exists and even increased during 2007, but we must watch closely for the possibility that the deterrence could weaken.”

Barkan added that the US twice tried to “open a door for Syria” in 2007, but Damascus failed to meet the administration’s demands regarding its continued involvement in Lebanon.

European diplomatic sources said on Friday that an attempt to exchange messages between Israel and Syria in recent months has failed due to inability to reach an agreed-upon agenda for talks between the two countries.

“The Syrians wanted the talks to revolve only on the (occupied) Golan (Heights),” the European diplomats said. “But Israel wanted to first talk about other issues that trouble it, such as (Syria’s) ties with Iran and the support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and Syria did not agree.”

In another development, the Israeli special ministerial committee advising Prime Minister Olmert on the issue of releasing Palestinian prisoners “with blood on their hands” in exchange for abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is likely to recommend that the government relax conditions for freeing such prisoners.

According to Israeli sources, three of the five ministers on the committee support changing prisoner release policies.