Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert denied Monday that he had committed to withdrawing from the occupied Golan Heights, as a precondition set by Syria for renewing peace negotiations.

"All that I said to the Syrians was that I know what you want, and you know what I want. There is no commitment beyond that," Olmert told an Israeli parliamentary committee on foreign and security affairs.

In a surprise, three-way announcement from Jerusalem, Damascus and Ankara, Israel and Syria said last week that they were holding indirect peace negotiations under Turkish mediation, the first such talks in eight years.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem had said that Damascus agreed to revive the peace talks, after receiving assurances via Turkey from Israel, that it was willing to withdraw fully from the Golan, to the border of before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Israel captured the strategic plateau overlooking the Sea of Galilee from Syria during that war.

Olmert defended both his decision to revive the talks with Syria, and the negotiations he is holding with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"If, heaven forbid, against our will and because of a miscalculation, we were drawn into a violent confrontation between us and the Syrians, then (people) would come and ask me: how can it be that they wanted peace and you didn't even check out that possibility?"

Slamming his hardline critics, the Israeli premier also said that those who believed Israel could hold on to all of the West Bank and still remain a democratic state with a Jewish majority, were "delusional."

"Today, we have to make a cruel choice between the Greater Land of Israel and a Jewish state - these two cannot exist together except in the minds of those who are delusional," Olmert told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.

Of Israel's population of some 7.3 million, under 5.5 million are Jews and almost 1.5 million are Israeli Arabs. If Israel were to annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as Jewish settlers and their right-wing supporters advocate, this would add some 3.8 million Palestinians in the occupied territories and within several years the Jewish would become a minority.

"I was among those who believed that the two-state solution was wrong, but that was a mistake," said Olmert, now the leader of the centrist, ruling Kadima faction but previously a member of the hardline Likud party.

Turning to extreme-right lawmakers, he then blasted: "You cause the state of Israel to be drawn into endless wars, just to avoid giving up one grain of land."

"We are talking to a leadership that wants and is talking peace, and doesn't initiate terrorism," Olmert said of Abbas.

He said he believed it was still possible to reached a signed understanding with Abbas this year, before US President George W Bush leaves office, but reiterated that understanding would only be implemented once the Palestinian Authority had brought militants under control. (dpa)