DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria said Friday that it was willing to cooperate with Washington to reimplement the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel, which created a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating the two countries’ forces.

In a statement following a phone call with his US counterpart Marco Rubio, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani expressed Syria’s “aspiration to cooperate with the United States to return to the 1974 disengagement agreement.”

Washington has been pushing diplomatic efforts towards a normalization deal between Syria and Israel, with US envoy Thomas Barrack saying last week that peace between the two was now needed.

Speaking to The New York Times, Barrack confirmed this week that Syria and Israel were engaging in “meaningful” US-brokered talks to end their border conflict.

Following the toppling of longtime Syria’s Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad in December, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes on military targets in Syria and carried out incursions deeper into the country’s south.

Israel has also deployed its troops into the UN-patrolled zone separating Syrian and Israeli forces under the 1974 agreement.


https://www.timesofisrael.com/syria-willing-to-work-with-us-on-return-to-1974-disengagement-deal-with-israel/