Assad sets terms for Syria to attend Middle East moot

President Bashar al-Assad said Syria will stay away from a US-sponsored Middle East conference unless the Golan is discussed and that his country will retaliate to an Israeli air strike on its own terms.
He told the BBC in an interview, broadcast on Monday, that the agenda of the conference slated for November in the United States would have to include the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The BBC's correspondent said Assad identified the target of the air strike last month as an "unused military building" and that the warplanes had hit "nothing of consequences".
In his first public reaction to the strike on northern Syria, the president said in the rare interview with a foreign journalist that it showed Israel's "visceral antipathy towards peace". The BBC quoted Assad as saying Syria reserved the right to respond to the attack. "Retaliate does not mean missile for missile and bomb for bomb. We have our means to retaliate, maybe politically, maybe in other ways," said Assad.
"But if we want to retaliate militarily, this means we're going to work according to the Israeli agenda, something we don't look for" in the runup to the conference, he said. Tensions have soared on Israel's border with Syria since Damascus said its air defences fired on Israeli warplanes that dropped munitions deep inside its territory in the early hours of September 6. US and British press reports said Israeli warplanes bombarded a secret military site harbouring North Korean nuclear material after first consulting Washington.
On the US-sponsored conference, the Syrian leader said Damascus had yet to decide whether to attend because it needed further clarification about what would be discussed.
"So far we didn't have the invitation and we didn't have any clarification about anything," he said. "If they don't talk about the Syrian occupied territory, no, there's no way for Syria to go there. "It should be about comprehensive peace, and Syria is part of this comprehensive peace. Without that, we shouldn't go, we wouldn't go," said the Syrian president.