Muslim countries meeting in the Syrian capital criticized Israel Monday but said they were open to better ties with the Jewish state if it took steps toward a “just and comprehensive” Middle East peace deal. “We must not reward Israel for its crimes,” said a statement issued at the end of the three-day meeting of foreign ministers of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). “It should be affirmed that any progress on ties must be linked to how much the Israeli position represents a commitment to a just and comprehensive peace that guarantees the restoration of rights and occupied land,” the statement said. US President Barack Obama is due to address the Muslim world on June 4 from Cairo, a seat of Islamic learning and one of only two Arab countries to have signed a formal peace treaty with Israel. The other is Jordan whose monarch, King Abdallah, said that Obama was forming a Middle East peace plan that could involve normalisation of ties between Israel and the whole Muslim world. Ties between Israel and Muslim countries are mostly weak, the exceptions including Turkey, a secular but predominantly Muslim country that also has military links with the Jewish state. Syria, which supports the Palestinian group Hamas and the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, is a self-declared champion of “resistance” to Israel's occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory, and the OIC said this concept was distinct from terrorism. “Terrorism is a dangerous global phenomenon, but this does not mean that we should allow it to be used to confuse issues and describe resistance as terrorism,” the statement said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attended part of the meeting and also met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal at the Russian embassy in Damascus. A statement from Hamas said that Lavrov told the group that Russia was still trying to convene a Middle East peace conference and that Moscow hoped the Palestinians, split between Hamas and the Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas, would be represented by one delegation.
