Bush to Press for Results in Mideast Talks : Diplomacy: The Administration hopes for progress on foreign policy accomplishment before Clinton takes over.

With Israel and its Arab adversaries warily edging toward peace after almost half a century of conflict, the Bush Administration intends to increase pressure on both sides to obtain some concrete results before President-elect Bill Clinton takes over.

Administration officials say they are determined to avoid the lame-duck syndrome when it comes to Middle East affairs, vowing that until Clinton’s inauguration 10 weeks from now, they will press hard for progress on what could be the most important foreign policy accomplishment of President Bush’s tenure.

Both Arab and Israeli spokespersons say they, too, want to avoid a post-election lull in the negotiations, which began more than a year ago in Madrid.

Gearing up for the final push, Dennis Ross, the top Middle East strategist for former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, returned to the State Department on Friday to join Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian at the top of the U.S. mediation team. Djerejian has been alone in the job since August, when Ross followed Baker to the White House to try to revive Bush’s reelection campaign. Ross resumed his post as the department’s chief of policy planning.

After a brief pause for the election, the talks resume Monday in Washington. In separate but parallel negotiations, Israel is bargaining with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians.

U.S. officials say the Djerejian-Ross team has two objectives for the transition period:

* The first is to nail down emerging agreements between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Jordan on the subjects to be addressed in an eventual peace treaty, and to nudge Israel and the Palestinians toward a compromise for limited self-government for the Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

* The second is to bring Clinton’s Middle East team, once it is named, up to speed so the talks will continue without a major break after Jan. 20.

In his campaign, Clinton singled out the Middle East peace process as a Bush initiative that he intends to continue. At a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in August, Clinton promised “complete continuity in that process after the election if I win in November.”

At times in his long race for the presidency, Clinton expressed positions Arab leaders consider openly pro-Israel. However, Hanan Ashrawi, spokeswoman for the Palestinian delegation, said that while Arabs object to some of Clinton’s campaign oratory, they plan to treat the President-elect as an impartial mediator.

“I think all we need is an understanding . . . that the Clinton Administration would want to inherit a successful process and not a floundering one or one that’s in a stalemate,” Ashrawi said. “If the peace process has its own self-sustaining momentum, then he can pick up a winning prospect rather than a losing venture.”

Khalil Foutah, deputy director of the Palestinian Affairs Center, a thinly veiled PLO office in Washington, said the Arab side will continue to press for a more active American role even after Clinton moves into the White House.

“We are willing to cooperate with any American President,” Foutah said. “The Palestinian side in particular and the Arab side in general would appreciate a greater American role in the negotiations. If we want to keep this process going and want to achieve progress, the Americans have to stay the course and play a greater role in it.”

Both Arabs and Israelis have an incentive to try to get as much done as possible before the change.

“Both Arabs and Israelis have questions” about Clinton, said Richard Murphy, the State Department’s top Middle East official during the Ronald Reagan Administration. “I have heard from some pretty senior Israelis, ‘Is he going to be engaged?’ I have heard from Arabs, ‘Is he as pro-Israel as his campaign speeches?’ ”

Geoffrey Kemp, a former National Security Council expert on the region, said there is “an incentive to lock things in sooner rather than later because the Middle East is the Middle East and terrorism and escalating violence can always disrupt an otherwise smooth agenda.”

“There is also a possibility that Clinton will be distracted by domestic affairs or other foreign policy matters,” said Kemp, who is now a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “If something can be done, it is in everyone’s interest to try to do as much of it as possible before January.”

Nevertheless, it will not be easy. The first time that either Djerejian or Ross tries to muscle either side, he will discover the diminished influence of a defeated Administration.

“There is very little that an outgoing Administration can do except for the technical matter of helping the parties do something they were going to do anyway,” said William B. Quandt, a former NSC staffer and now a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“If they try to pressure any party to do anything against its will, the temptation will be to wait until there is a new Administration,” Quandt said. “Nobody is going to make big changes in position.”