WASHINGTON - Syria is not pessimistic about US-brokered talks that had set a goal of a Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the end of 2008, said its envoy to Washington, Imad Moustapha.

But he warned that Israel’s occupation of territories and killing of Palestinians could wreck negotiations launched at the US-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland last month.

“It can go into the footnotes of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict but it can be the start of something and I am not going to be very pessimistic,” Moustapha told a forum organized by Georgetown University late Thursday.

“Negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis are happening right now as we talk, there is always this possibility -- remote or not -- that something might happen, something positive,” he said.

Moustapha stressed however that comprehensive peace could only be attained if Israel “changed the reality on the ground” and ended its “policies of occupation.”

He highlighted what he called a “pan-Arab” understanding that normalization of relations could not take place “if Israel continues to occupy territories and kill our people.”