U.S. Pushes Mideast Talks Despite Election Focus : Negotiations: Administration tries to head off stagnation in peace efforts as Arabs, Israelis watch polls.

With both Arabs and Israelis reading public opinion polls that indicate President Bush’s days in office are coming to an end, the Administration is struggling to head off election-season stagnation in the Middle East peace talks, which resume here today.

A senior Administration official said Washington plans to push the parties toward compromise by playing a far more active role than at any time since the talks began a year ago.

“In the Middle East, things don’t stand still, they go backward” if they don’t advance, the official told reporters. “It is our very serious intent to do what we can . . . to push the parties toward making substantive progress.”

In advance of the seventh round of face-to-face talks, Acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger sent a detailed letter to each party suggesting specific compromises needed to overcome generations of hostility and distrust. Although the details were kept secret, the thrust of the letters was to urge the parties to stop quibbling over technicalities and start looking for areas of possible agreement.

For instance, the senior official said, the Administration is advising the Palestinian delegation to concentrate on negotiating with Israel over the powers and responsibilities of a proposed interim self-governing authority for the Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, instead of trying to guarantee in advance that Israel will eventually give up the territories it seized during the 1967 Middle East War.

In effect, the United States is calling on the Palestinians to accept Israel’s latest offer, which U.S. officials are convinced is the best the Palestinians can hope to secure.

“We are telling them to focus on divisions of authority” between Israel and the proposed Palestinian self-government “and to negotiate about the things they want done,” the senior official said. “This is a unique opportunity to define as broadly as possible the spheres of responsibility.”

If the Palestinians take the U.S. advice, he predicted, elections could take place as early as next May, and Palestinian officials could be in charge of at least some aspects of the daily life in the territories shortly after that.

Turning to the separate talks between Israel and Syria, the official said that chances are “about 50-50” that the region’s most intractable foes will be able to agree this month on a “statement of principles” that would establish the framework for negotiation of a peace treaty.

In the round of talks that ended last month, Israeli and Syrian negotiators reached agreement on several paragraphs of the proposed statement, but their talks broke down over the core issue of Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, Syrian territory captured by Israel in 1967. Syria demanded that Israel commit to a withdrawal before further talks on elements of a peace treaty, while Israel insisted on fixing the terms of peace before talking about withdrawal.

From the standpoint of the talks, the Nov. 3 election could hardly have come at a worse time. Now that the parties seem poised for serious talks, the authority of the U.S. mediator may be about to unravel. Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, the architect of the peace talks, has been diverted to the White House to run Bush’s beleaguered campaign. And it is unclear what influence the Administration will have if the President is defeated at the polls. Bush would have 2 1/2 months as a lame duck.

“After one year of what we could call pre-negotiations, the parties are now moving into the critical phase of deal-making,” said Martin Indyk, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“This is precisely the moment that the secretary of state should be out in the region shuttling between the principals to cut the deal. . . ,” Indyk said. “This is the moment James Baker has worked and waited for. And it is ironic, perhaps even tragic, for the peace process that at this very moment, democracy in the United States has diverted the attention and energy of the master deal-maker.”

At the State Department, officials are understandably reluctant to discuss the impact of the election except to insist that U.S. politics will not be allowed to derail the process. One top official argued that the Arab and Israeli negotiators should get to work around the conference table without waiting for U.S. shuttle diplomacy.

“I don’t think peace in the Middle East becomes academic no matter who is elected President of the United States,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday. “And we’ve made very clear . . . that the talks should proceed without regard to our electoral calendar.” There are indications that the Arabs and Israelis agree with the general thrust of that assessment.

Arab negotiators concede privately that they are concerned about the unabashedly pro-Israel rhetoric of Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the front-running Democratic candidate. These Arabs said they will try to make as much progress as possible between the election and Inauguration Day next Jan. 20 if Clinton wins.

However, there is no particular incentive for Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to hold back and wait for a Clinton administration. Rabin needs to make progress in the peace talks for his own domestic political purposes, and a post-election hiatus would cost him valuable time.