Mideast Talks Due to Resume; Rough Road Expected : Diplomacy: Both sides say they are ready for business on Tuesday, but no one predicts fast progress. The next test for Baker and aides will be of their patience.

After a week in which U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace negotiations resembled the theater of the absurd--falling somewhere between Franz Kafka and 19th-Century French farce--Arab and Israeli negotiators are expected to get down to real business this week.

Both sides say they are ready to start talking about the essential issues of the decades-old dispute, a development that would be without precedent. But no one expects progress to be quick or easy.

Although Israel and its Arab adversaries--Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians--were represented in Washington last week, they did not talk to each other. Delegates on both sides now say the talks will start Tuesday.

For Secretary of State James A. Baker III and his top aides, who have devoted most of the last eight months to the task of bringing about the talks, the next test will be of their patience.

“Obviously, the secretary of state, who has put in so much effort, will want to crown his achievement in Madrid (where the peace conference began) with an agreement, for personal reasons if not for reasons of state,” said Martin Indyk, executive director of the Washington Institute of Near East Policy.

But Indyk urged Baker to show restraint. He said that the secretary of state is in danger of violating his own oft-stated rule that the United States cannot appear to want peace more than the other parties to the process. In the past few days, Indyk said, Baker “made it appear that he wanted talks more than the Israelis did.”

Already, Israel is objecting to what it considers American interference, and the Arabs, who now welcome an active U.S. role, will almost surely change their minds if the United States starts to suggest specific concessions they should make. Last week, some Arab spokesmen grumbled that Washington was not moving forcefully enough to bring the Israelis to the bargaining table.

“If we’re being criticized by both sides, maybe we are doing something right,” Baker said Sunday on the CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Nevertheless, U.S. officials say Baker fully understands that the negotiations will be long and difficult--and ultimately may fail. These officials say they hope the talks will soon become so arcane that the public will lose interest, thus relieving the pressure on the American sponsors to produce dramatic results.

“Baker and President Bush are naturally going to be impatient,” said Samuel L. Lewis, president of the U.S. Institute of Peace. “But the complications are such that . . . the most you can hope for is possibly some sort of agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on interim arrangements within six to 12 months. With the Syrians, at best you can start to grind out something, but it is a long, slow process.”

Lewis, a retired diplomat who was U.S. ambassador to Israel under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, said Bush and Baker may feel some domestic political pressure to generate agreement before next year’s election. But he said it is unlikely that they can force the matter that quickly, even if they try.

“I don’t think that even if you had a peace treaty signed . . . it would make any difference in the election,” Lewis said. “The Carter experience is telling,” he added, referring to the former President’s defeat for reelection despite the diplomatic triumph of the Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt.

The Middle East peace conference began Oct. 30 with an internationally televised extravaganza in Madrid. On Nov. 3, the key phase of the peace process began--direct talks between Israel and each of its closest neighbors: Syria, Lebanon and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. Although the talks went on for hours, they produced no agreements, not even on when and where to meet again.

After giving the parties three weeks to select a venue for additional talks, Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, as co-sponsors of the conference, fixed the date themselves--last Wednesday in Washington.

The Arabs showed up, but the Israelis, miffed by what they considered unilateral U.S. action, stayed away. Israel said it would be ready to talk today, but Arab delegations said that today would not be convenient because it is the fourth anniversary of the intifada , the uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Arabs said they would be willing to start on Tuesday, and Israel ultimately accepted that schedule.

In the meantime, each side accused the other of being unwilling to meet. By the end of the week, State Department officials were muttering that dealing with the Arabs and the Israelis is like refereeing a fight between kindergarteners. But beyond the wrangling was more serious--although perhaps no less childish--maneuvering for psychological advantage and public relations points.

Both Israelis and Arabs hope to establish precedents when the stakes are low that can be carried over to later talks when the stakes will be higher.

Despite last week’s harsh rhetoric, U.S. officials are confident that the words will not sour the atmosphere for substantive negotiations. After all, the officials reason, if the two sides were willing to talk after years of trying to kill each other, they are unlikely to back away because of rhetoric.

“We said at the start of this process that there would be many hitches and many disruptions along the way,” Baker said Sunday. “We’ve just had one.” He added: “The mere fact that they are going to talk doesn’t mean that we will have peace. But I can guarantee you that if they did not talk, there would never be peace.”

If substantive negotiations do begin this week, as all sides now say they want, several key points are likely to be addressed:

* Israel and the Palestinians will talk about establishing a form of limited self-rule for Palestinian residents of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Thirteen years after the Camp David conference devised the autonomy formula, the plan has become acceptable.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who voted in Parliament against the Camp David accords, has embraced the autonomy plan as though he had just thought of it. And Palestinian residents of the occupied territories, who for years denounced the plan as a snare designed to deny them their national rights, have come to recognize that limited self-rule is far better than their present situation.

* Israel and Syria will talk about the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and annexed in 1981, and about ways to end the formal state of war that has existed between Damascus and Jerusalem since 1948.

While the issues are rather clear-cut, both sides have staked out such uncompromising positions that it is difficult to see how much progress can be made. Syria demands the unconditional return of the Golan Heights while refusing to promise to sign a formal peace treaty even if it gets the land back. Israel demands a peace treaty but insists that it will not withdraw from the Golan under any circumstances.

* Israel and Jordan do not have the same sort of festering disputes that Israel has with both the Palestinians and the Syrians. There is no territorial dispute between the two countries, because Jordan years ago relinquished its claim to the West Bank, maintaining that the territory should be part of a new Palestinian state instead of being returned to Jordan, which controlled it between 1948 and 1967.

Jordan’s most important contribution to the talks may be to provide additional legitimacy to the Palestinian delegation. Israel refused to negotiate with an independent Palestinian delegation, so the Palestinians entered the conference as part of a joint delegation with Jordan. But the Jordanians have promised that the Palestinians can handle the negotiations on matters relating to the West Bank and Gaza.

* Israel and Lebanon will talk about security of Israel’s northern border and about the presence of Israeli troops in a narrow strip of southern Lebanon. The issues are straightforward, but no one expects much progress until Israel and Syria reach an accommodation, because Syria exerts a strong influence over Lebanon’s government.