BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israel 'tests' Syria peace aims

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israel 'tests' Syria peace aims: "Israel's government has sent secret messages to Syria about the possibility of renewing peace negotiations, the deputy prime minister has confirmed.

Shaul Mofaz did not comment on the content of the messages, but said it was important that a secret channel existed for sending them.

He said Syria had yet to respond. The last attempt at a deal between the two countries broke down seven years ago.

On Wednesday, PM Ehud Olmert said his country did not want war with Syria.

He also repeated his warning that a 'miscalculation' could spark hostilities between the two.

Israel and Syria are officially at war, and Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967.

Syria says that in the mid-1990s the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to a total pullback from the Golan Heights.

The Israelis say this was only a theoretical acceptance and that it depended on the full normalisation of relations, a condition that Syria, it claims, did not accept." Read complete post here.