Syria said on Wednesday the time was ripe to seek a just peace between Arabs and Israel, but insisted any negotiations must build on the outcome of previous peace efforts and U.N. resolutions. Israeli-Syrian peace talks broke down in January 2000 over the future of the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. "It (Syria) has always displayed a willingness to return to negotiations on the ground set through Madrid (peace conference in 1990), United Nations resolutions and the land-for-peace formula. This stance has not changed," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Buthaina Shaaban told reporters. "I really believe it's about time we do that (achieve peace) in the region because all small solutions are not going to solve problems, what is needed is a whole settlement." Earlier peace talks envisaged an Israeli withdrawal from Arab land occupied since the 1967 Middle East war and the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel through the so-called land-for-peace principle. On Monday, a source in the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said Syria had secretly approached Israel about resuming peace talks before the U.S.-led war or Iraq. Syria on Wednesday denied it had made the back-channel proposal. "Syria denies categorically these allegations...the goal of these allegations is to undermine Syria's credibility," said Shaaban. "Peace-building is an honorable matter and does not require any secret negotiations." Israel's Maariv daily reported that a brother of President Bashar al-Assad and an Israeli businessmen had met in Jordan before American troops invaded Iraq on March 20. After analyzing the offer, Sharon questioned Syria's motives, the source at the prime minister's office told Reuters. Maariv said Sharon felt at the time that Syria had made the proposal only as a tactical move to curry favor with Washington ahead of an expected U.S. war in Iraq. Shaaban rejected as unacceptable Sharon's position that he was only willing to hold talks without pre-conditions. "If Security Council resolutions and the Madrid terms of reference were to be called pre-conditions...(then) this is not acceptable," she said. Sharon was responding to a reported call for talks from Assad carried by U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos after a visit to Damascus last week. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad.(AFP/POOL/File/Dave Caulkin)