Syria Accepts U.S. Formula for Seeking Peace

Syrian President Hafez Assad on Sunday accepted the American formula for seeking peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, calling Washington’s proposals “positive and balanced.” His decision could revive the stalled U.S. initiative.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III told reporters in Washington that Assad’s response “moves the Syrian government further than they have been willing to move in any peace process effort that I’m aware of before.”

Remarking that he had seen the contents of Assad’s message only briefly, Baker said, “I would characterize it as positive.

“I didn’t see . . . anything expressed specifically as conditions,” he added. “However, I do think that there are in there some suggestions that we will want to probe and determine whether or not they are in any way conditional.”

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh said last month that the Damascus regime wanted unspecified guarantees of success for the talks before agreeing to take part.

The Israeli government offered no immediate official reaction, but a senior member of the Foreign Ministry, noting Baker’s response, told a Times reporter: “Of course, this makes us look like the stubborn ones.”

In contrast to his judgment of the Syrian message, Baker last month said he was disappointed with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s response to the U.S. proposals, saying it had a “negative tone.”

The long-awaited Syrian answer to a letter that President Bush sent out at the first of June to Assad, Shamir and other principals in the proposed talks could set the stage for another round of Mideast diplomacy by Baker. He has made four trips to the region since the end of the Persian Gulf War seeking to spin the momentum of the allied victory into progress on an overall Arab-Israeli peace. The secretary will accompany Bush this week at the G-7 summit of industrialized democracies in London and on the President’s later visits to Greece and Turkey.

The official Syrian Arab News Agency reported that Assad’s response came in a return letter to Bush. Foreign Minister Shareh handed it Sunday to U.S. Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian in Damascus.

According to the SANA report, the letter delivered “Syria’s reply to Bush’s proposals for convening an international peace conference to reach a comprehensive and just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of U.N. resolutions.” It hailed efforts by Bush and Baker “to cope with difficulties that block convening the conference,” the agency said.

Difficulties have arisen on both sides, with Israel and the Arab states disagreeing over the representation at a conference, the format for peace talks and role of the Palestinians in separate talks.

A key Arab demand, pushed hard by the Syrians, called for the conference to take place under U.N. sponsorship. Assad’s letter said the American compromise proposals were “positive and balanced and constitute an acceptable base to reach a comprehensive solution . . . because the proposals are based on the principle of international legitimacy and a U.N. role in the peace conference.”

In accepting, the Syrian government apparently has agreed to take less than U.N. sponsorship; the world organization would be represented only with observer status under the current U.S. formula, and sponsorship would fall to Washington and Moscow. But Damascus couched its acceptance on U.N. resolutions 242 and 338 being the bases of peace talks. Those resolutions, adopted after the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars respectively, call for Israel to withdraw in whole or in part from occupied Arab territories in return for peace. Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israel in the first war, and Jerusalem formally annexed the key border region in 1981.

Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states have agreed to be represented by an observer at the talks. The European Community has accepted the same formula. Jordan and Egypt have said they favor the proposals.

The peace process promoted by the Bush Administration comprises two parts: Talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors--all of which except Egypt are still in a state of war with Jerusalem--and related negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian delegations on the future of the occupied territories. Only the country-to-country peace talks would fall under the Soviet-American sponsorship.

Times staff writers Robert C. Toth, in Washington, and Daniel Williams, in Jerusalem, contributed to this report.