Mr Assad has told the BBC he will attend the talks if Israel hands back to Syria the strategically important Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

Mr Assad's is a voice rarely heard in the western media. Like most Arab rulers, the Syrian President prefers not to be questioned by outsiders, even though, in his case, his English is good.

First he wanted to put Israel on notice that he might retaliate for a mysterious and far from fully explained Israeli air strike in his country four weeks ago.

"We have our means to retaliate, maybe politically, maybe in other ways, but we have the right to retaliate in different meanings," Mr Assad said.

"If we want to retaliate militarily, this means we're going to work according to the Israeli agenda, something we don't look for."

So Syria will not retaliate, in Mr Assad's words, "bomb for bomb" or "missile for missile".

Syria does have other options. It could use its links with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, or its influence with the new rulers of the Gaza Strip, the Islamist Hamas movement.

Bashar al-Assad is not giving any detail, but he is increasing the pressure on the United States, which has been anxious to pull together a successful meeting in mid-November on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"I mean, this conference or any conference is going to be an opportunity, but it should be purposeful and should be substantive," he said.

"I don't see what the purpose and what the substance of this conflict. What are they going to talk about? What's the criteria? What's the method? Everything is not clear."

It is another potential problem for a conference which is already looking shaky.

A number of Arab states have wanted Syria's attendance at the US-backed conference because, they argue, otherwise it will lack legitimacy.

But now Syria's put forward its own demands, that the conference tackle the 40-year-old issue of Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights.

Israeli settlements

Mr Assad is not the only one cranking up the pressure. The extreme right of Israeli society, the settlers, have made their own move.

In the last 24 hours they made a push to establish five new settlement outposts in the Israeli occupied West Bank.

Under international law the move is illegal, not that that concerns Rabbi Marcus, from the large Israeli settlement of Efrat.

"We want to settle the land and let everybody know that the land is ours," he said.

He knows that there is intense international opposition to the settlements, but says it does not worry him.

"Who is the greater joke, Olmert that has less than a 3 per cent support of this nation, Mahmoud Abbas, that has a flimsy hold on a small part of the Palestinian Territory, with the Hamas gaining momentum every single day, or President Bush, who is a lame duck about to be leaving office?" Rabbi Marcus asks.

"So we know very, very well it's cheap talk for political survival purposes that will lead to nothing."

In the end, the move lasted only a day. Israeli defence forces evacuated the new outposts before they could be built.

Set against this tide, the Israeli Government has now released around 60 Palestinian prisoners as a goodwill gesture for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

This year it has been dressed up as a measure to boost the fortunes of the so-called moderate Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

The number of prisoners released represents less than 1 per cent of the close to 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. © 2007 Australian Broadcasting Corporation