during the course of that meeting president hafez al assad, who is known for long meetings, we discussed virtually every problem of the world and he have peri problem of the mideast. -- and every problem of the mideast. it seemed president assad was open to conversation. i had many similar meetings with him, was the only member of congress to attend his funeral in the summer of 2000. at that time i met his successor, president bashir assad and have gotten to know him with meetings virtually every year in the intervening time. there have been back channel negotiations conducted through turkish intervention between israel and syria, and i think that dialogue between the united states and syria could promote future discussions between syria and israel. it would be my hope that the day would be sooner rather than later when syria would be willing to talk to israel directly. the israeli officials, the prime ministers have repeatedly stated their interest in direct conversations. syria has resisted but has undertaken conversations through back channels. president clinton came very close to eff