"I invite President Assad to come to Jerusalem to seriously negotiate with Israeli leaders on the conditions of a peace accord," Katsav said on Israeli public radio.
"Assad will be welcome, but there should be no preconditions," he added.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday that he was ready to forge peace with the Palestinians and Syrians but only if they were prepared to show a willingness to bring an end to "terrorism".
"Israel is ready and willing to negotiate once Syria stops its help to terror," he said, referring to Damascus's backing for militant Palestinian movements including Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia.
The prime minister added, "Syria has been under pressure since the end of the Iraq war... Syria is suspected of affording cover to terrorism in Iraq and of cooperating with Iran on terrorism".
He said that at a time when Syria was talking about resuming negotiations with Israel it was aiding the Hezbollah group in southern Lebanon "which continues to act with the Iranian Guardians of the revolution against Israel".
During the previous talks with former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, then Israeli premier Ehud Barak agreed to an almost total withdrawal from the Golan Heights, save for a narrow strip of land bordering the eastern bank of the Sea of Galilee.
But Damascus rejected the proposal, wanting the return of all of the strategic plateau Israel occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed in 1981. – Sapa-AFP.
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