Syria says ready to work with US on return to 1974 disengagement deal with Israel

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani says that Damascus is willing to cooperate with Washington to reimplement the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel.

In a statement following a phone call with his American counterpart Marco Rubio, Shaibani says he expressed Syria’s “aspiration to cooperate with the United States to return to the 1974 disengagement agreement.”

Syria and Israel have technically been in a state of war since 1948.

Israel’s takeover of the buffer zone along the Syrian border following the fall of Bashar al-Assad last December is considered by the United Nations to be a violation of the 1974 disengagement accord.

Israel says the accord has fallen apart since one of the sides was no longer in a position to implement it, and that the takeover was a defensive move to protect the country from potential hostile forces that could have exploited the power vacuum.