Syria said on Friday it was willing to cooperate with the United States to reimplement the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel, which created a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating the two countries’ forces, AFP reports.

In a statement following a phone call with his US counterpart Marco Rubio, Asaad Al-Shaibani expressed Syria’s “aspiration to cooperate with the United States to return to the 1974 disengagement agreement."

Washington has been pushing diplomatic efforts toward a normalization deal between Syria and Israel, with envoy Thomas Barrack saying last week that peace between the two was now needed.

Speaking to The New York Times, Barrack confirmed this week that Syria and Israel were engaging in “meaningful” US-brokered talks to end their border conflict.

Following the toppling of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad in December, Israel deployed its troops into the UN-patrolled zone separating Syrian and Israeli forces.