Syria to attend Mideast summit

The Bush administration was able to declare a clean sweep when Syria, the last Arab world holdout, said Sunday it would attend this week's high-stakes Mideast peace conference.

But as 16 Arab nations and the Arab League prepared to sit down with Israel for the first time in more than a decade, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made it clear they should not expect to dictate the contours of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

League members grudgingly agreed a few days ago to send their foreign ministers to the conference, meant to renew Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after a violent, seven-year lull in negotiations. Most members do not have ties with the Jewish state.

Syria had threatened to skip the three-day meetings in Annapolis, Md., and Washington, if they did not address the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed. But with that issue added to the agenda, the deputy foreign minister, Faysal Mekdad, will participate, according to Syria's state-run news agency.

Nonetheless, the absence of Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem appeared to indicate that Syria was not entirely confident the conference would address its concerns over the territory. More....