Arabs Balk at Syria Boycott of Group Talks With Israel : Mideast: But they pledge not to normalize relations until there is a withdrawal from occupied lands.

Arab foreign ministers Thursday pledged that they will not normalize relations with Israel before it withdraws from occupied Arab lands, but they failed to back Syria’s move to boycott group talks with Israel unless the Jewish state signals an intent to return the lands.

Concluding two days of meetings before Wednesday’s Middle East peace conference in Madrid, ministers of the key front-line states agreed on a common negotiating strategy. It includes a demand for an immediate freeze on Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israeli withdrawal from Jerusalem and other occupied territories and guarantees of full national rights for Palestinians.

Conference sources said the ministers declined to publicly join Syria in its announcement that--unless Israel makes progress toward withdrawing from occupied lands--it will not attend the third phase of the peace talks, multilateral negotiations between Arabs and Israelis on issues such as water, arms control and the environment.

But the Arab ministers assured Syria that they will not normalize relations with Israel without a resolution of this issue, sources said.

“Everybody gave their assurance there isn’t a single Arab state that is ready to normalize relations with Israel or discuss water projects or whatever before the Israelis give up what the Arabs are demanding--namely land and the national rights of the Palestinian people,” said Shafik Hout, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee and a delegate to the talks.

Lebanon has joined Syria in threatening to delay multilateral talks unless there is a move toward withdrawal. But most of the other Arab delegates, representing Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, hold the view that there are other ways to accomplish the same end, conference sources said.

“Perhaps the Syrians will not go,” one delegate said. “But for the rest of us, it is too far into the process. You cannot negotiate a formula for months, very intensively over the last few weeks, and then suddenly say, ‘I’m not going to eat half of the pie.’ ”

Even the PLO has been reluctant to boycott multilateral sessions because the Palestinians view talks with the Israelis, at any level, as crucial, another delegate said, noting: “You see, the Palestinians are the weakest partners in the conference. Every time the PLO sits down with an Israeli, they are a power. Whether it’s bilateral talks or regional talks, each time, they become more powerful. So, they cannot afford to give that up.”

The PLO is not to be a direct participant in the talks because Israel has refused to negotiate with the group, which it considers a terrorist organization. Instead, Palestinian residents from the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be part of Jordan’s delegation.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s announcement Wednesday that he will personally head Israel’s delegation has been greeted with alarm by Arabs amid predictions that agreements with a delegation headed by Shamir will be more difficult to achieve.

“Now that he is heading the Israeli delegation, everybody is very pessimistic,” said one Syrian official. “Now everything is very clear: He is there to spoil everything and come home smiling and say, ‘I didn’t give anything away.’ ”

Analysts predict that Shamir’s decision to head the delegation will prompt the Arabs to consider upgrading their own delegations, which are now projected to be headed by foreign ministers.

In their final communique, the Arab ministers stressed that they have achieved “unity in the Arab position,” an apparent reference to mutual pledges that no country will sign a separate agreement like Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

Syria might have the most to gain from a separate peace because a resolution of the issue of the Golan Heights, captured by the Israelis in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed, is widely viewed as easier to achieve than an Israeli agreement for withdrawal from the West Bank. Yet, Syria has pushed hardest for commitments from other Arab states against separate agreements, possibly because it was so stung by what it regarded as former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s betrayal of the Arabs with the Camp David accords.

“Most of our problems today range from Sadat’s initial steps,” a Syrian official said in an interview. “It’s obvious Israel did not appreciate what Sadat did. They took it as something they won rather than something that was a forward step toward peace.”

Syrian officials said they were primarily concerned that the Persian Gulf states, represented at the meeting by Saudi Arabia, or the North African states, represented by Morocco, would insist on pushing forward with multilateral talks quickly, or perhaps even drop the Arab economic boycott against Israel, without parallel Israeli concessions.

“The Moroccans and the Saudis have no problem with Israel at all. They have no territory lost to them. For them, the peace process looks very simple. The Americans want peace, and peace treaties will be signed, and everyone will be happy,” said one official. “This is really very far from life. Really, it is a fantasy. The problem is not exchanging diplomats with Israel. The problem is territory.

“We are not fighting with the Saudis,” he added. “But what our foreign minister is trying to make them understand is there is Syrian territory involved, and they must consider that if they want to make peace.”

A key part of the meeting was to develop negotiating strategy: which U.N. resolutions will be brought into play at what point in the talks; how independent bilateral talks can be coordinated so that the Israelis cannot play the Arabs off one another.

To help meet that concern, the ministers agreed to form a coordinating committee and to meet regularly during the peace conference and subsequent talks to align their positions.