COLUMN ONE : Lifting the Political Veil of Damascus : U.S. Ambassador Djerejian digs for diplomatic motives in secretive, suspicious Syria. His search paid off for Robert Polhill.

It had been a sleepless night, as was the night before, as would be the two nights after. Edward P. Djerejian, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, was operating on catnaps when, after a long afternoon of anxious waiting, Robert Polhill walked in.

For Polhill, it was the end of more than three years as a hostage in Lebanon.

For Djerejian, it was the culmination of a tense, days-long diplomatic odyssey that had sent him rushing back to Damascus from a meeting in Bonn, shuttling back and forth between the embassy and the Syrian foreign minister’s office, on the phone, into a meeting, and back to the Foreign Ministry--where, finally, the pale, thin, former university professor was ushered in.

“I told him, ‘Mr. Polhill, you don’t know how happy I am to receive you into American hands,’ ” Djerejian said this week, recalling the events of last Sunday. “He looked at me and smiled, and he said, ‘Mr. Ambassador, you can never be as happy as I am right now.’ With a wry smile on his face. It was beautiful . . . this tremendous sense of humor.”

The next morning, with Polhill safely on a plane to West Germany, Djerejian summoned the exhausted embassy staff to an 8:30 meeting that stretched through most of the morning. Granted, the Syrians had exerted heavy pressure to help persuade the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine to let Polhill go. Now the question was: Why did they do it? What was in it for Syria?

It has been a characteristic of Djerejian’s style as ambassador to one of the most contrary and inscrutable countries in the world--its relations historically rocky not only with the United States but with many of its Arab neighbors--to probe constantly below the surface for motives. He tries to peel back the veneer of Baath Arab Socialist ideology and secrecy that overlays the regime of Syrian President Hafez Assad and find out where, unlikely as it seems, common interests may be hiding.

Damascus is not a capital where a U.S. ambassador can expect a warm welcome. Squarely planted in the Soviet camp and dependent, until recent years, on $3 billion a year in aid from Moscow to finance one of the most formidable arsenals in the Middle East, Syria has long been viewed by Washington as a threat to Israel and a breeding nest for terrorists.

Syria has returned the suspicion, perceiving itself backed into a corner of the Arab world, surrounded by hostile armies in Iraq, Israel and Lebanon that have at one point or another been blessed with American aid. The United States withdrew its ambassador entirely in 1986 and invoked congressional sanctions over accusations that Syria was involved in a foiled plot to bomb an Israeli El Al airliner in London.

As American ambassador, Djerejian lives with his wife and two children in a lovely, jasmine-scented villa with a large swimming pool and a lawn where a lamb, the constant companion of daughter Francesca, frolics.

(The lamb will be given to the gardener for slaughtering during the upcoming Muslim feast of Abraham, in accordance with local custom. Francesca, over a recent dinner of lamb chops, sobbed and wailed “I’m sorry!” over the prospect.)

The idyllic abode is monitored constantly, the comings and goings of guests recorded by the Syrian secret police. The phones are known to be bugged. Syrian guests drop by only infrequently for a casual chat.

But Djerejian, 51, who is fluent in Arabic, Russian, Armenian and French, had already spent three years in the similarly authoritarian atmosphere of Moscow before being detailed to the White House as deputy press secretary for foreign affairs and, later, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs.

He arrived shortly after the ambassadorship was restored in 1988, and the course of U.S. relations in Damascus, still chilly, swerved dramatically up a new path.

For one thing, Syria, cut off from much of its Soviet aid (as part of Moscow’s general reduction in foreign aid) and nursing a troubled economy, has been mending many of its fences with the West. It took one of the first steps more than two years ago by expelling the notorious terrorist Abu Nidal and has in recent months restored relations with one of America’s primary allies in the Middle East, Egypt.

But a variety of diplomats and other analysts in Syria credit the reserved, pragmatic Djerejian with making unprecedented inroads into the secrecy-shrouded Syrian government. He holds regular meetings with Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh and has better direct access to Assad than any other Western diplomat.

“Most ambassadors come here and they see the president when they present their credentials and they never see him again,” explained one Western diplomat.

In recent years, even U.S. diplomats have had to rely on second-hand information, courting contacts through journalists and occasionally seedy middlemen with access to the top levels of Syria’s power structure.

“It is no secret that when I first saw President Assad, when I was presenting my credentials, I said there are two ways an embassy can work. We can basically rely on second- and third-hand sources to determine what you and your government are about, but I prefer to do it the other way,” Djerejian recalled.

“I told him I did not come to Damascus as ambassador to sit in a beautiful residence and spend my time at cocktail parties, picking up diplomatic chitchat and sending cables to Washington based on that. He laughed. . . . But we are over that hurdle, and we are a well-informed embassy.”

Djerejian went on to raise eyebrows around town when, last year, he and his wife hosted a surprise birthday party for the Soviet ambassador, an old acquaintance from Moscow.

“I think a lot of people were shaking their heads,” he said, grinning. “If the American ambassador is having a birthday party for the Soviet ambassador in Damascus, this perestroika and glasnost stuff must be real!”

As ambassador, Djerejian has tried to plumb Syria’s motives in the Middle East, determine when they agree with those of the United States and present suggestions--sometimes strongly worded suggestions--about how Syria and the United States can pursue joint objectives in the region.

“His brief is to coordinate and deepen the dialogue, but it’s going to be a tough dialogue. When he’s told to push, he pushes,” said one Western diplomat.

Djerejian shrugged when asked about that.

“We are not playing softball here,” he said. “It is not a softball country. . . . Look at the issues: Combatting terrorism, the Arab-Israeli conflict and all the crisis management that involves, the Israelis and the Syrians in Lebanon . . . the hostage issue, the Lebanese civil war itself. None of these issues are easy.

“That is why our approach here is to deal with the issues frankly, directly, assertively when necessary, and with respect for the Syrian side’s considerations. You cannot be a good interlocutor if you just go into things blindly without trying to analyze what the interests of your interlocutors are.”

Djerejian and his staff were active around the clock last fall in what turned out to be a successful attempt to persuade the Syrians, wary of giving up their interests in Lebanon, to commit in writing to a two-year withdrawal of their 40,000 troops after the installation of a stable government and political reforms.

The Syrian agreement is regarded as the embassy’s biggest coup under Djerejian’s tenure--that and the hostage releases. Shortly after Djerejian arrived, Polhill’s fellow Beirut University College professor, Mithileshwar Singh, an Indian-born resident of the United States, was released through Damascus. Singh had been kidnaped in January, 1987, in Beirut along with Polhill and two other Americans.

“It is an emotional event for everybody,” Djerejian said of a hostage release. “I think, ultimately, the main source of emotion is the freeing of a human being from captivity. We Americans have such stock in personal freedom and liberty. It is as if your national ideal is being focused on . . . and what it all means comes to the fore when an American is freed.”