Assad Ready to Act on ‘Serious Initiative Toward Peace’ : Mideast: Syrian leader meets with Mubarak. Both are waiting for the U.S. to take the first step.

Syrian President Hafez Assad said Sunday that he is ready to move forward on “a serious initiative toward peace” in the Middle East, but both he and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said they are waiting for Washington and Israel to take the first step.

Assad held two days of meetings with Mubarak in his first trip to Egypt since its peace treaty with Israel more than a decade ago.

Bringing hard-line Syria into the Middle East peace process was a key summit goal for Mubarak, who has attempted during the past year to act as an intermediary between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization to set up a dialogue for peace in the region.

After nearly six hours of private talks, Assad said he expects an eventual reconciliation in Syria’s longstanding feud with Iraq, but he stopped well short of lending Syria’s unqualified support for direct negotiations with Israel--and neither side announced any major breakthroughs in bringing Syria into the peace process.

Mubarak said the issue of how to reactivate the peace process was a key focus of the discussions but emphasized: “We are waiting to see what will be the final result of the American-Israeli negotiations. Then we will think about what to do in the future.”

The summit comes at a time when the Arab-Israeli peace process is virtually stalemated. A new hard-line government in Israel has dug in further against direct negotiations with any Palestinians connected directly or indirectly to the PLO, and leaders throughout the Middle East are awaiting Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s response to the most recent Israeli pronouncements.

Moderate Arab leaders such as Mubarak have sought in recent months to coalesce the Arab line, seeking ground to engage even radical states like Syria in an attempt to provide a unified front at any negotiating table that is established.

Assad, historically one of the most intransigent of the Arab leaders against peace with Israel, has moved closer to the moderate line in the past year as Syria, its historic military buildup no longer bankrolled by the Soviet Union, has seen its own isolation within the Middle East growing.

Syrian cooperation is crucial not only to resolving the issue of the Golan Heights--captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War--but in Lebanon, where Syria’s 40,000 troops provide much of the base of support for the government of President Elias Hrawi.

“There is no difference between President Mubarak and myself on the carrying out of a serious initiative toward peace,” Assad said in a rare press conference with Western journalists.

Assad reiterated Syria’s past support for U.N. Resolution 242, which calls for troops to withdraw from occupied lands and recognizes the right of Israel and other countries in the region to exist within secure borders. “We maintain our belief on this position,” he said. “We want a comprehensive and just peace.”

Assad conceded that problems remain between Syria and Iraq, which are governed by rival wings of the Arab Baath Socialist Party and which have been plagued by bitter relations for the past decade.

“But after all, we are two Arab countries,” he said, “and no matter how long this difference remains, we will reach an agreement.”

Assad was also mildly conciliatory toward the PLO, which has been feuding with Syria since Assad expelled PLO chief Yasser Arafat in 1983, noting that “there are no concrete issues on which we differ. . . . It is only a matter of variance of views on which we differ.”