Syria: No preconditions for dialogue with US

Syria had no further comment Sunday on remarks made earlier this week by its foreign minister, who said Syria hoped to recover the Israeli-held Golan Heights but was not setting that as a condition for dialogue with the United States. In the interview with the Washington Post on Thursday, Walid Moallem said Syria had no preconditions for restarting talks with the United States. Moallem did not specifically address talks with Israel but his words seemed to refer to those, also. "A constructive dialogue has to start without preconditions. Dialogue has a literature (of proper procedure). You don't put demands. You put agreed goals. Under this, you put each side's commitment to achieve the goals in a parallel way. This is how we understand constructive dialogue," he said.