Israel, Syria Take First Step Toward Peace Pact : Diplomacy: Negotiators for the bitter enemies reach their most significant accord in almost 20 years.

Israeli and Syrian negotiators agreed Wednesday on the first provisions of an embryonic peace treaty, reaching the most significant accord between the bitter enemies in nearly 20 years.

The chairmen of the Syrian and Israeli delegations, in remarkably similar comments to reporters, said they have completed work on some elements of a text outlining the issues to be included in the treaty.

Although they acknowledged that they have not yet come to grips with the knotty territorial issue--the question of the Golan Heights--Israeli Chairman Itamar Rabinovich and Syrian Chairman Mouaffak Allaf claimed to have made substantial progress toward settling the Middle East’s most intractable dispute.

“We discussed texts, we compared texts, we agreed on some formulations,” Rabinovich said. “We continued to disagree on some but disagree in a positive spirit.”

“We have discussed some of the important elements in the document, and we were able to agree, at least in a general way, on some of these elements,” Allaf said.

Although the chairmen met reporters separately, they appeared to have coordinated their remarks. While neither delegation provided complete details of the provisions agreed to Wednesday, an Israeli official said they included a formula for addressing Israeli and Syrian security concerns.

Nevertheless, far more difficult negotiations remain ahead. Earlier this week, Syria said it would accept nothing less than a total Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, while Israel said it would discuss nothing more than a partial return of the strategic plateau seized by Israeli forces in the 1967 Middle East War.

Rabinovich and Allaf said they are hammering out a framework to guide later negotiations on a peace treaty. But they said their objective is to address all major issues in the text that is now under discussion.

Allaf said he hopes the framework can be completed before the current round of talks ends next week, although Rabinovich said “it would be premature to mark the end of the round as the target date.”

“We are still in the area of general principles, (and) everything depends on what would be the situation when we come to more specific and more detailed parts of the document,” Allaf said. “We shall come tomorrow, maybe, or the day after tomorrow to the paragraphs of the document which deal with the Israeli withdrawal in a more detailed manner. But . . . if we continue tomorrow with the same spirit, maybe we can say that there is certain progress in our discussions.”

Allaf cautioned that “everything depends on the document in its entirety and not . . . only a part of the document.”

“The document is comprehensive; it deals with all necessary elements for comprehensive, just and lasting peace,” he said.

Wednesday’s announcement marked the first time that Jerusalem and Damascus reported substantive agreement on any subject since the 1974 separation-of-forces negotiations that followed the 1973 Middle East War. And it was the first time Israeli and Syrian officials had reached an accord on their own; the talks 18 years ago were conducted through the mediation of then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

The progress in the Israel-Syria talks, once thought to be totally deadlocked, overshadowed the separate peace negotiations Israel is conducting with Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians. But Yossi Beilin, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said Jerusalem hopes to conclude an interim agreement on limited self-government for the Palestinians within “months, not years or generations.”

Beilin told a seminar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that Israel’s new Labor Party-led government will pursue a much more flexible strategy toward the peace talks than the Likud-led regime of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Beilin acknowledged that the Palestinians distrust Israel’s plan for limited autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But he argued that the Palestinians would be far better off with autonomy than they are now.

Under the Israeli proposal, Palestinians would administer most of their own domestic affairs for a five-year transition period. Negotiations over the final status of the territories would be conducted during that time.

“After five years with an elected council, no government of Israel would come to them and say, ‘OK, kids, you’ve had it for five years and now we are going to annex the territory,’ ” Beilin said.

“The question is whether the other side will see this as an opportunity that will never return,” Beilin said.