December 30, 2007 (LPAC)--U.S. Senator Arlen Specter, on a tour of Southwest Asia, emerged from a meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad very hopeful about the prospects for peace between the two countries. According to a report from the Associated Press, Specter said that the political atmosphere inside the two countries was different now, and that the time is good for restarting peace talks that have been stalled since 2000. "We had a very productive meeting with Assad," he said, and he had the impression that the time was "very positive for productive talks between Israel and Syria." He attributed the different atmosphere in both Israel and Syria to last month's peace conference in Annapolis, Md.