ANKARA, August 5, 2008 (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Turkey Tuesday for a brief holiday and to discuss the indirect negotiations taking place in Turkey between his country and Israel, local media reported.

The Syrian leader, who was accompanied by his wife, was welcomed by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife at the airport in Bodrum, a major tourist destination, NTV and CNN-Turk television stations reported.

The two men then had a working lunch and discussed the Israel-Syria talks as well as the wider situation in the Middle East, according to the networks.

Assad and his wife plan to spend nearly a week on holiday in a luxury hotel in Bodrum, which is visited by hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists each year, the online edition of the Hurriyet newspaper reported.

Israeli and Syrian officials completed a fourth round of talks in Turkey in July and agreed to resume negotiations later this month.

Under the format of the talks, which started in May after an eight-year freeze, Israeli and Syrian officials do not see each other and Turkish diplomats shuttle between the two sides.

Israel and Syria have been formally in a state of war since the Jewish state was created in 1948, but the two countries have since signed an armistice.