Arabs See U.S. in Key Role on Talks : Mideast: They hope the get-tough approach toward Israel will outlast the overture.

Faisal Abdel Hamid, a university student in the Nile delta town of Zagazig, carried a poster recently with a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and President Bush.

“How can I sit with the Arabs?” a scowling Shamir wants to know. “Never mind,” Bush replies. “Go sit with them. They are Arabs who have undergone American modification!”

Somebody didn’t think it was funny, according to an account published by Egypt’s Socialist Labor Party, and Hamid became one of about 70 students and others arrested in Egypt while protesting the Middle East peace conference.

That the issue of U.S. influence may have touched a raw nerve somewhere is not surprising. As Arabs prepare for the second round of the peace conference with Israel, they have pinned nearly all of their expectations on the hope that it is the Israelis who are undergoing U.S. modification--and that Washington’s new get-tough approach to Israel will outlast the overture.

Dismayed with Israel’s gestures since the opening round of talks in Madrid--a new Jewish settlement in the Golan Heights, attempts to split the talks into separate sessions (a strategy the Arabs see as dividing and conquering), balking at Wednesday’s opening date--many Arabs seem convinced that the next round of talks, whenever they get under way, are inevitably headed for a quick stalemate that only the United States will be able to break.

“I can tell you, nothing is going to take place in Washington except a confrontation between the two delegations. The Israelis are rejecting something which the Arabs will not accept any dialogue on. The Israelis will repeat the same slogans, and it will bring the meeting to a deadlock quickly,” said Adnan Omran, a senior Arab League official.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Amir Moussa, in an interview last week, added: “The U.S. must play a major role. As the leader of the negotiations, they can offer incentives. They are the ones who have got the experience from Camp David and from Blair House, and I can say already that if there had been no American role, it would have been impossible to reach what we have reached.”

In the mood of cautious pessimism that seems to be prevailing in the Arab camp, not all of the blame is being cast toward Israel. Some Arabs say now that they may have made a tactical blunder by accepting U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338 as a basis for the talks--recognizing Israel, demanding territories captured in 1967 and leaving themselves with no more room for maneuvering.

“The Arabs are going to the conference and are expected to make more concessions, and there aren’t any concessions left to make,” said a Syrian diplomat.

Throughout the Arab world in the month since Madrid, there has been an anxiousness to resume the talks, coupled with a rising conviction among opponents of the talks that they are leading nowhere.

In Egypt, which already has made peace with Israel, opposition to the peace conference resulted in the arrest last month not only of Hamid and other demonstrators but of two former members of Parliament.

In Jordan, Taher Masri, the prime minister whose appointment in June had been viewed as a signal of King Hussein’s determination to press forward with the peace talks, was replaced after Madrid by a key royal aide, in part because the Muslim Brotherhood’s opposition to joining the peace conference threatened Masri’s support in Parliament.

Jordan is still moving decisively forward with the peace process, but the king warned last week that, if the talks do not reach an acceptable settlement, “then the ground will be left to extremist elements, and frustration will breed cases which may lead the whole region to the brink of a precipice, a catastrophe.”

The Arabs’ camp has fallen into disarray, in some respects, over how best to extract concessions from Israel. Syria was furious when Jordan quickly accepted Washington’s invitation to attend the next round of talks on Wednesday without holding out for guarantees, such as a promise that the next round would focus on substantive, not procedural, issues.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh canceled a planned visit to Amman, and King Hussein has put off a visit to Cairo, a trip that was planned to finally heal the rift between the two nations that developed during the Gulf War.

Egypt has been working to temper Syria, attempting to coax Damascus into attending regional talks on arms control, the environment and water--which are viewed by Washington as ways of giving Israel enough confidence to make progress on such key issues as territory. The United States and its Arab allies have said the talks will go forward with or without Syria, but Syrian diplomats point out that none of these regional issues can be resolved without Syria’s participation.

The Palestinians have tried to ride the fence, proclaiming publicly they agree with Syria that the multilateral talks shouldn’t proceed without progress on the bilateral talks and saying privately that the talks need to move forward on all fronts.

“Let us speak frankly. If you want peace, and a genuine, comprehensive settlement in the area, then you have to solve all the problems,” Mohammed Subieh, general secretary of the Palestine National Council, the Palestinians’ government in exile, said in an interview. “We will do our best to overcome every problem on our side, and if the Syrians are not the problem, we will support the Syrians. If the Israelis are the problem, why should we push the Syrians? Their land is occupied as well.”

If the talks get under way this week, the Arabs are determined that a halt to Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights will be at the top of their agenda.

The Arabs said they will be watching Israel’s response to the settlement issue closely--as well as the American response.

“I think the settlement issue is really a test of the credibility of the Israeli attitude but also to the co-sponsors’ seriousness--whether they will be able to do something when the negotiations reach a stalemate,” one Arab diplomat said. “If the Israelis insist on continuing the settlements in the occupied territories, this is proof that they are not serious, and the U.S. has to do something about that. . . . If they cannot do this, how can they push the Israelis to do something even more important than that, like accepting the principle of land for peace?”