Mideast Security Talks To Resume Christopher Crafts Deal To Get Israel, Syria Back At The Table

After holding what he called a “very productive meeting” with the Syrian president, Hafez al-Assad, Saturday, Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced that long-stalled talks between the military chiefs of Israel and Syria would resume in Washington on June 27.

“The agreement that we have reached on this rather detailed and ambitious work plan confirms the determination of parties to seek an early peace,” Christopher announced after three hours of talks with the Syrian leader, who alone among Israel’s Arab neighbors has not made peace with Israel.

The agreement to resume talks on security arrangements between Israel and Syria, which would form one component of a full peace settlement, was first announced in Washington on May 24, and the formal achievement of Saturday’s talks was to confirm the date and the participation of the Israeli and Syrian military Chiefs of Staff.

But Christopher’s mission, on a trip on which he has met or will meet also with the leaders of Israel, Egypt, the Palestine Liberation Organization and Jordan, has been less to negotiate new agreements than to build momentum in the revived Arab-Israeli contacts and to bolster their public image.

At every stop, Christopher has stressed the importance of regaining ground and moving as far forward as possible on all tracks of the search for a comprehensive peace settlement before it becomes mired in campaigns for 1996 elections in both Israel and the United States.

Syria is the most important of Christopher’s stops in his four-day mission, because it is the last of its neighbors with which Israel has not reached a settlement, and because the issues at stake are sensitive to both sides.

Christopher’s meetings with leaders of the Israeli and Syrian governments were preceded by personal telephone calls to both from President Clinton. The secretary told one interviewer that Clinton could be willing to travel to the Mideast if that would help the effort, but officials said this was not discussed with Assad.

The central question is how to end Israel’s 28-year occupation of the Golan Heights. The military talks in Washington will not deal directly with the Golan, but rather with security arrangements that would lessen tensions and mutual suspicions on the Israeli-Syrian border. Previous meetings between the chiefs of staff on the issue collapsed in December in mutual recriminations, and part of the task in bringing them back together was to negotiate a framework that would enable them to move on.

The series of meetings Christopher outlined would last only through the end of July. But Christopher and his aides said they hoped that progress on the security issue would create the atmosphere and trust to tackle other, more difficult issues, most notably the scope and timing of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

The Syrian and Israeli ambassadors to Washington have been holding regular talks in recent weeks on these other questions, and Christopher said these meetings would continue.