Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said on Saturday that negotiations on a security deal with Israel were focused on areas Israel has recently occupied and excluded the broader issue of the Golan Heights.Since the December 8, 2024 overthrow of Syria's longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, Israel has sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights.
Israel captured most of the plateau from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and later annexed the areas under its control, in a move not recognised by most of the international community.
Israel and Syria's new authorities have held several rounds of direct talks in recent months, and after negotiations in January -- and under US pressure -- they agreed to establish an intelligence-sharing mechanism as they edged towards a security agreement.
When asked at the Munich Security Conference about the scope of the talks with Israel, Shaibani said discussions were on "the withdrawal of Israel" from Syrian territory occupied after Assad's ousting, "not from the Golan Heights, and this is another issue".
To reach a security deal, Israel should "respect the security of Syria and withdraw from these territories" recently occupied, he added.
"These negotiations will certainly not lead to forcing an acceptance of the fait accompli imposed by Israel in southern Syria," he said.
"The end of these negotiations will be the withdrawal of Israel from the areas where it advanced" since December 2024, and with Israel refraining from "interfering in Syria's internal affairs" and sovereignty, Shaibani added.
Israel, which has demanded a demilitarised zone in southern Syria, has also launched hundreds of strikes on its neighbour and has carried out regular incursions.
Shaibani on Friday met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Munich and discussed a recent agreement between Damascus and the Kurds.
Mazloum Abdi, chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was also in attendance.
Syria's government and the Kurds last month signed an agreement to gradually integrate Kurdish forces and institutions into the state, after the SDF ceded territory to advancing government troops.
Shaibani told the Munich conference that the Rubio meeting involving Abdi "confirms the new mindset Syria is adopting today".
"We do not view our national partners as enemies," he said, adding that the country's national identity is "completed by Syria's diversity".
The US military said on Friday it had completed the transfer of thousands of Islamic State group suspects, including many Syrians, to Iraq, after they were held in Kurdish-run prisons in northeast Syria for years.
Shaibani said Damascus was "prepared in future to take back" Syrian detainees "to ease the burden on Iraq".
