DIPLOMACY : U.S.-Syrian Relationship Turns Chilly : Damascus hints that it might be prepared to ease its historic enmity with neighboring Iraq.

In recent weeks, it has become painfully apparent that a new chill is descending on the once-thawing U.S.-Syrian relationship.

With the Middle East peace talks seemingly going nowhere and the United States leading the drive to enforce United Nations sanctions against Libya, Syria--and other Arab nations--are having second thoughts about the foreign policy of President Bush and the United States.

Alarm bells have been going off all over Damascus, starting in April, when Syrian President Hafez Assad equated what Bush calls the “new world order” with “the law of the jungle.” Assad also accused the United States of unfairly seeking to subvert Arab arms acquisitions while providing massive military aid to Israel.

“How does this fit with the U.S. role as a fair sponsor of the peace talks?” he demanded. “How does this fit into the ‘new world order’ they talk about?”

Diplomats here say the Syrians also were “absolutely outraged” at American threats to halt a ship believed to be carrying sophisticated intermediate-range missiles to Iran and Syria earlier this year. More recently, officials expressed dismay at America’s failure late last month to remove Syria from the list of nations sponsoring terrorism, continuing the ban on U.S. economic and military aid to the economically strapped nation.

Damascus has sent out warning signals in the last few months that it might be prepared to ease its historic enmity with neighboring Iraq if its rapprochement with the West does not work out.

Mail service was restored to Baghdad after a long hiatus. Syria’s official media suddenly halted its barrage of anti-Saddam Hussein rhetoric. There were rumors that Syria might reopen a pipeline for Iraqi oil and its closed border posts with Iraq.

“It’s a tactic,” one diplomat here said. “Syria sees it as in its interest to give a signal to the West that you have to do something to keep us on side.”

But it got people’s attention. So did Syria’s threat last month, when the U.N. sanctions against Libya took effect, to fly a plane to Tripoli. Syrian Arab Airlines even took tickets and checked baggage for the sanctions-busting flight before announcing that surrounding countries would not let the jet fly through their airspace.

Alarmed U.S. officials demanded an immediate explanation. A Syrian official was said to have replied with a shrug: “Have you seen a flight leaving for Libya? No? Then what are you complaining about?”

“There’s very strong disillusionment. We expected more,” said one Syrian Baath Arab Socialist Party official of the relationship with Washington.

Another government official added: “If there is going to be a new world order, this order should be fair. We will accept to have all the arms seized, but not to prevent us from having arms when our enemy Israel is armed to the teeth. . . . We are not asking for a honeymoon. We are asking the American Administration to be in the middle. But even this is not achieved.”

Although most political analysts here regard Syria’s saber-rattling about the sanctions against Libya as a tactic to appeal to the streets, Syrian officials say the threat to break the sanctions was an expression of indignation and insist they would still fly the plane if they could.

What is at work, said diplomats here, is Syria’s fear that, with U.N. sanctions already in effect against Iraq and Libya, the United States may next single out Assad’s regime for international pressure. “With the sanctions, of course, we should be worried. We are next. That’s the general feeling. . . ,” the Baath Arab Socialist Party official said.

The next point of confrontation promises to be Lebanon, where the 1989 Taif peace agreement calls for Syrian forces to move out of Beirut and back to the Bekaa Valley by Sept. 22. The United States is likely to want the withdrawal to occur before scheduled parliamentary elections, allowing them to be held without Syrian interference. Syria is said to prefer keeping its forces in place to guard the balloting. Nobody is willing to predict how the standoff will end.

Western officials tend not to worry too much about the cooling with Syria. No one expected a honeymoon, they say, and in the places where it counts--say, participation in the peace talks--Syria is on board and will stay there because it is in its interest to do so.

How the Ties Thawed

For years, U.S.-Syria relations were rife with hostility, exchanges in which Americans accused Syrians of being terrorists and Syrians accused Americans of being imperialists. Then came the start of a diplomatic honeymoon:

President Bush and Syrian President Hafez Assad met in Geneva in November, 1990, the first meeting between U.S. and Syrian heads of state in 13 years.

Syria began using its influence for the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon.

The United States turned its head as Syria drove Lebanese Forces commander Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun out of Lebanon, consolidating Syria’s control over the nation.

And a few months later came a stunning sight: Syrian troops deployed side-by-side with Americans on the battlefields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Last year, at U.S. urging, Assad for the first time in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict agreed to hold face-to-face talks with Israel.