Talks Mark Superpower Turning Point : Diplomacy: The transformation of the U.S.-Soviet relationship from confrontation to cooperation is validated in Madrid.

The United States and the Soviet Union, which in their four decades of Cold War rivalry battled one another over and over through regional surrogates, will convene a peace conference in Madrid this week in an effort to end the most vexing of those conflicts--that between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Although no one expects a conflict as tangled and bitter as that in the Middle East to be settled quickly, the joint resolve of the United States and the Soviet Union to bring it to an end has achieved a first--the agreement of all parties to participate in a conference with the declared goal of a full and lasting peace.

“We cannot make peace in the Middle East--only the Arabs and the Israelis can do that,” said Yegor Yakovlev, a member of the Soviet delegation in Madrid. “But we can assist them by saying, first of all, ‘We will no longer help you make war.’ In the past, we and the Americans more or less did the opposite; it suited both our purposes, and there were many wars.”

The change is one of historic dimensions, not only for the Middle East but also for the two superpowers, since it marks, far more than earlier Soviet-American mediation efforts, the transformation of their relationship from confrontation to cooperation.

“The problems are tremendous, and the acrimony is certain, but the significance of this conference should become clear when it opens in Madrid with President George Bush of the United States and President Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union sitting side by side as the co-chairmen,” said Samuel W. Lewis, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and president of the Peace Institute in Washington.

“This is more than a symbol, more than a diplomatic signal--this is the public commitment of the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union to put the full efforts of their governments toward a solution.”

The Soviet Union, beset with so many of its own troubles, undoubtedly is the weaker partner in the superpower coalition, but senior U.S. officials have been firm on the need for its participation.

“Words matter in the Middle East,” a White House policy-maker said in Washington. “Even if they (the Soviets) are not the superpower they were five years ago, what they say or don’t say, what they sell or don’t sell, still makes a difference. They have influence with the Palestinians, and they have influence with the Syrians.”

Arab diplomats were even more straightforward. “The Soviet Union is our guarantee of a fair deal, not an American plan imposed for the benefit of Israel,” a senior Arab ambassador said here. “If the Soviet Union were not a co-sponsor, there would be no conference, and without Soviet mediation there will be no peace.”

And a senior Soviet specialist on the Middle East said: “Our participation gives the Madrid conference a superpower wrapping, but that is important to the Americans because it avoids the image of U.S. sponsorship and a precooked deal.”

“We have little real leverage,” acknowledged Viktor A. Kremenyuk, deputy director of the USA Institute here, “but we also no longer have great vested interests to defend. Our role at Madrid will be very much a soothing one.”

Bush and Gorbachev will meet Tuesday, the day before the Mideast conference opens, for one of their impromptu, no-agenda summits that have served to deepen Soviet-American relations over the last three years.

U.S. and Soviet diplomats expect the two leaders to discuss at length the Soviet Union’s economic and political problems and its need for further Western assistance. They are also certain to discuss disarmament following Bush’s initiative in reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal and Gorbachev’s response with even deeper cuts in Soviet weapons.

“ ‘How do things stand with you?’ is one question that Bush will put to Gorbachev,” a senior U.S. diplomat said, noting that this is their first meeting since the failed coup d’etat by hard-line conservatives in August. “And Gorbachev will undoubtedly lay out the Soviet Union’s needs for this coming winter and the reforms that lie ahead.

“While this is not a meeting for big decisions or concluding agreements, big decisions and future agreements will probably flow from it,” the U.S. diplomat said. “That is the nature of the relationship now--the dialogue is a continuing one and leads to things like our arms initiative and Gorbachev’s response.”

The twin event--a Middle East peace conference and a Soviet-American summit--is itself evidence of a new era in international politics where superpower cooperation has quickly become the rule.

“There is a reshaping of the world going on before our very eyes as the United States and the Soviet Union undo a lot of what they had done over the past 30 or 40 years,” commented Gen. Ahmed Fakhr, director of Egypt’s National Center of Middle East Studies.

“Their relationship is changing fundamentally--no one disputes that--and the impact is being felt in wave after wave around the world. First in Europe, then in Africa, later in Asia, now in the Middle East. The ‘new world order’ they talk about is being worked out.”

The Mideast conference opens Wednesday in Madrid with the initial plenary meetings, followed, under a plan worked out by Secretary of State James A. Baker III, by direct bilateral talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors--Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt--and between Israelis and Palestinians.

A third stage will come several weeks later with regional talks on such issues as security, water resources, economic development and environmental protection. Other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, are expected to join these talks.

Beyond that, the only plan is a process of continuing negotiations--and the conviction that all sides want to end the prolonged conflict and will work through the negotiations to resolve, one by one, their differences.

“On the Arab side, there is a decided shift in mood--the time has come for peace,” said Vitaly V. Naumkin, deputy director of the Institute of Oriental Studies and a leading Soviet specialist on the Middle East. “This is true of the Syrians, and even truer of the Palestinians. . . .

“There is a shift on the Israeli side too. Despite all its ‘no, never’ rhetoric about any kind of Palestinian state, even the Shamir government recognizes that it is time to sit and talk seriously.”

At a meeting here last week of top Israeli, Arab, American and Soviet specialists on the region, most of whom advise their governments and some of whom will be present in Madrid, the mood was decidedly upbeat.

“Madrid is the most complicated, complex effort at peacemaking since perhaps the Conference of Versailles ending World War I,” Lewis said, “but there are very good chances that this won’t end after two days . . . but develop into a robust process that eventually brings peace.

“And, having decided to come, it is not likely that the participants will easily let this conference fail.”

Gen. Aharon Yariv, director of Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies and the former head of Israeli intelligence, said after the Moscow meeting that he sensed a new willingness among Arabs and Israelis to rethink their positions.

“The major obstacle (in peace negotiations) has always been that it is a zero-sum game,” Yariv said. “It meant that every idea on every issue was assessed in terms of ‘What do I get out of this, and what does it cost me?’ If we overcome that, and I think we can, then we can talk to one another about what seemed impossible before.”

The role of the United States and the Soviet Union in these talks has been left vague beyond their role in the preliminary negotiations and in convening the conference. There is also a pledge to serve as international guarantors of any settlement.

“It is not so complicated--someone had to bring everyone together because we do not seem capable of doing it ourselves,” said Fakhr of the Mideast studies center in Egypt. “And it was logical for it to be the United States and the Soviet Union as the two states with the most influence in the region and the greatest international responsibilities.”

Lewis, a 15-year veteran of Arab-Israeli negotiations, added: “A lot of skill and diplomatic ingenuity will be needed from both the Soviets and the Americans in prodding, probing, setting a framework and maintaining the momentum.

“The mediation may be informal, but it will be active. We have not come this far to let the Madrid process fail, and that’s why it is, and must be, a joint U.S.-Soviet effort.”

Soviet officials, however, are quick to give Baker, who has made eight trips to the Middle East to organize the conference, full credit for the achievement.

“It has been heroic,” Georgy A. Arbatov, director of the USA Institute here, said of Baker’s mediation, “and because of it we are finally seeing a possibility of resolving this conflict. . . .

“The Middle East conflict has its own origins, but the Cold War made the region one of our battlefields. We really fought a lot there. It was the old story of ‘an enemy of yours is a friend of mine, a friend of yours is an enemy of mine.’ The whole region was divided into ‘your sons-of-bitches’ and ‘our sons-of-bitches,’ as President Roosevelt used to put it. And, of course, it was a wide-open channel for arms sales.

“Now that the Cold War is over,” Arbatov continued, “we should help both sides look for a solution. That is a moral obligation--after all, we aggravated the problem and made it so difficult to solve. It is also something we must do if we are to establish the ‘new world order’ that we have talked about so much. We must help, we simply must.”

Some U.S. officials are a bit chagrined that Moscow is co-host of the peace conference that Washington put together.

“The Soviets have little leverage left anywhere, certainly not in the Middle East,” a U.S. government analyst commented in Washington. “Leverage comes from military power, economic power or military sales. They simply don’t have many levers that they can use.

“Another source of leverage is the ability to marshal a united front and manipulate the levers of power. That ability is full of holes.”

In this analyst’s view, only future arms sales--and these are likely to be subject to limits agreed upon with the United States--promise to restore Moscow’s lost leverage.

“The co-sponsorship by the Soviet Union when it was first suggested appeared to bring greater import than it does today,” the analyst said. “That was before the putsch, before (Gorbachev’s) ability to act evaporated. . . .

“From the Soviet perspective, the conference is probably more important today than it was eight months ago. There are very few levers Gorbachev has left to maintain his position of power in Moscow. . . . This gives him life.”

To Soviet officials, this is “old thinking,” a reflection of the old superpower game in which each tried to gain at the expense of the other.

“There may be dangerous moments in this Madrid process when the negotiations are close to collapse,” Naumkin said, “and that is when the U.S. and the Soviet Union can play a role. The fact is that the Soviet Union is now accepted by every state, including Israel, in the Middle East, while the U.S. still has somewhat difficult relations with the Palestinians and the Syrians.

“What is also important is that our very weakness means that we will be an honest broker, for we have no ability to impose our will.”

Parks reported from Moscow and McManus from Washington.