US envoy George Mitchell met Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad on Saturday as President Barack Obama's administration steps up efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. US envoy George Mitchell discussed Washington's Middle East peace efforts with Assad, marking a further thaw of relations between the two countries. “We are well aware of the many difficulties ... yet we share an obligation to create conditions for negotiations to begin promptly and end successfully,” Mitchell, said after the meeting. George Mitchell says the US and Syria share an obligation to help peace negotiations begin “promptly” between Israel, the Palestinians and the broader Arab world. Mitchell spoke to reporters Saturday after a 90-minute meeting with the Syrian president. He is the highest US official to visit Damascus since 2005. The US administration is cautiously pursuing engagement with Syria, after years of hostility, in a bid to promote an end to the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict. Mitchell, on his first visit to Damascus, is accompanied by Jeffrey Feltman, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, who has visited twice since Obama took office. The two arrived on Friday from Beirut, where Mitchell pledged that Washington would not sacrifice Lebanon as it seeks to reach a comprehensive Middle East peace deal. Mitchels visit to Syria was preceded by talks between US and Syrian security officials in Damascus on Friday that included discussions on Iraq, sources in the Syrian capital said. A US embassy official said the meeting was between a “military-led” US team and a Syrian delegation. The official declined to give further details. Relations between Syria and the United States improved after Obama took office in January and U.S. officials said he was committed to seeking a peace deal between Syria and Israel as part of an overall Middle East peace deal. “Syria has an integral role to play in reaching comprehensive peace,” Mitchell said. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters in Washington that Mitchell's trip was partly a follow-up to Obama's speech in Cairo last week in which he vowed to seek a “new beginning” in ties with the Muslim world. Syria on Tuesday expressed readiness to resume preliminary contacts with Israel through Turkish go-betweens on relaunching peace talks that have faltered in the past over the fate of the Golan Heights. Last year, Turkey brokered four rounds of indirect contacts but Syria suspended them in December when Israel launched its devastating war on Gaza.
