News Brief09:22 AM

(IsraelNN.com) "Meaningful progress" has been made in talks between Israel and Syria and a public Israeli-Syrian declaration is in the works, according to Arab newspaper Al-Hayat. Senior sources, thought to be Turkish, told the newspaper that Turkey is working to bring Syrian and Israeli representatives together to sign a joint trilateral declaration, which will sum up progress made in secret talks carried out over the past 12 months.

The sources explained that Syrian President Bashar Assad had postponed the summit because he did not want to enter "a political adventure" without testing Israel's seriousness first. He thus stated publicly that Israel had expressed willingness to cede the entire Golan Heights to Syria and waited to see the reaction by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and by the public in Israel.

Olmert's reaction satisfied Assad, the sources said.