"The negotiations should resume at the point where they broke off in January 2000," Bashar al-Assad told Lebanese President Emile Lahoud in a telephone conversation, Syria's official SANA news agency said late Tuesday.

It came after Assad met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for the first time since floating his peace proposition, after which a spokesman said Cairo would press Israel to accept the offer that has so far been dismissed as propaganda.

Israeli-Syrian peace talks collapsed in acrimony over the fate of the strategic Golan Heights plateau, which the Jewish state occupied in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed.

Damascus has long insisted on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights for any chance of peace.

On Tuesday, a Syrian official, quoted by SANA, confirmed that Damascus wanted to "continue talks taking into account what has been achieved... including the Rabin offer".

According to Syria, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995, offered a complete return of the Golan in exchange for a normalisation in relations with Damascus.

"Syria's position does not contain any condition for resuming negotiations, but it affirms that the objective is peace," said the unnamed official.

Syrian readiness to resume peace talks -- which UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen made public last week -- comes as Israel is gearing up for a full evacuation of the Gaza Strip, due to begin in months.

Observers doubt hawkish Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will ever let Israel get bogged down in peace talks with Syria or contemplate any withdrawal from the Golan while occupied with his scheduled Gaza pullout.