U.N. Chief Tours Golan Heights

U.N. chief Kofi Annan on Sunday told U.N. peacekeepers who monitor the cease-fire on the disputed Golan Heights that the region’s leaders need to make compromises to achieve peace.

“I have come to the Middle East at a time of concern and uncertainty, where the importance of impartial monitors and mediators is as great as ever,” Annan told the soldiers.

Annan, who next visits Israel and the Palestinian territories, said he would urge the region’s leaders to have “the courage and flexibility to make the compromises” necessary for peace.

The peacekeepers were deployed a year after the 1973 Middle East war to patrol the cease-fire line separating Syrian and Israeli forces on the Golan Heights.

The 1,000-member force is based at Fawar Camp, about 30 miles southwest of Damascus, and includes troops from Austria, Canada, Poland and Japan.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War. Syria demands the return of the heights as a condition for peace with the Jewish state, but Israel insists the plateau remains crucial to its security.

U.S.-sponsored peace talks broke off two years ago, and Syria has insisted they resume where they stopped. But Israel’s hard-line prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he cannot accept concessions offered by previous Israeli governments.

Annan later returned to Damascus, where he met with Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa and President Hafez Assad.