Rabin Heading to U.S. for Crucial Visit : Diplomacy: He seeks assurances of Israel’s security needed for success in Mideast talks.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin left Thursday for a nine-day visit to the United States that Israeli officials believe will be crucial for resumption and later success of the Arab-Israeli peace talks.

In his first White House meeting with President Clinton, Rabin will be seeking American assurances on Israel’s long-term security that he feels will be necessary to conclude a peace treaty with Syria and to give Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip autonomy.

In an interview before his departure, Rabin said he sees “the beginning of a better situation, the beginning of a better approach by Syria.” He implied that an agreement on the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, would be his priority when peace talks resume next month.

Recalling the intensive American mediation that helped bring peace between Israel and Egypt nearly 15 years ago and the U.S. security assurances and assistance underpinning that agreement, Rabin said the Camp David accord “was not a bad model.”

But clearly concerned by the loss of momentum in the talks, suspended last December after Israel’s deportation of more than 400 Palestinians suspected of supporting militant Islamic groups, Rabin said his discussions with Clinton will concentrate on ways to propel the negotiations.

“I have to get a sense (of Clinton’s approach to the Middle East) and to try to explain Israel’s positions,” Rabin said, making it clear his Cabinet will soon have to make major, even fateful decisions--how far to retreat on the Golan Heights, how much self-government to grant the Palestinians. For this, the American stance will be an important element.

“We have to . . . set parameters on what are the limits from the Israeli point of view, at least on the major issues related to the peace negotiations with all the Arab partners, particularly Syria and the Palestinians,” Rabin said.

The increase in terrorist attacks will make Israeli decisions harder. Two Israelis were reported wounded Thursday in stabbing attacks by Palestinians; one was a fruit farmer, 49, stabbed in the back by a worker, the other a 15-year-old whose throat was slashed while visiting his father’s factory in the Gaza Strip.

On Wednesday night, an army reservist was critically wounded in a stabbing by an Arab in Nazareth.

“The Palestinians are very, very frustrated--that is clear,” Mordechai Gur, the deputy defense minister, commented. “We have had waves (of attacks) like this before, and in time we will overcome this as we overcame the others. But these attacks are very serious, and they do affect the peace process.”

In his meetings with Secretary of State Warren Christopher today, then with Clinton on Monday, Rabin also wants to discuss ways to get the negotiations under way again and the American role as “a full partner,” as Christopher put it during his Middle East trip last month.

Rabin is convinced that active American participation will be needed for progress in the talks but does not want that to translate into U.S. pressure for Israeli concessions. He views a good relationship with Clinton and Christopher as a key goal of this visit, officials said.

“In hiring Washington to be an ‘honest broker,’ we know we will have to pay a price,” a senior Israeli official said. “What Rabin needs to do is make clear to Clinton and Christopher what the limits are. . . . He will also be speaking to the American Jewish community on this question.”

Rabin is particularly troubled by the format of the Washington negotiations, which bring Israel together with Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians simultaneously but on a bilateral basis. “Whenever three or four Arab partners come at the same time . . . to negotiate peace with Israel,” he said, “it creates an interdependence, and the most extreme elements can influence or limit the others.”

The Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, a longtime critic of Palestinian participation in the peace talks, is opposing return to the negotiations because of the Palestinians still exiled in southern Lebanon.

“Hamas, which opposes the peace negotiations, affects the Palestinians, and they affect Jordan, and Jordan affects Syria,” Rabin said, complaining that the talks’ format devised by the United States when negotiations began in October, 1991, gives the most radical Arabs effective control of the whole process.

What Rabin apparently will be seeking is not a change in format; that would reopen even the procedural agreements already reached. Instead, he seeks an understanding with Clinton and Christopher on how to proceed so that peace can be concluded with Syria this year.

While denying Thursday that any plans have been drawn up for Israel’s pullback on the Golan Heights, Rabin has made it clear that, as the army commander who captured the region, he has thought long and hard about its return.

“We are ready to withdraw the Israeli armed forces on the Golan Heights to secure and recognized boundaries, but we won’t negotiate the geographical dimensions of the withdrawal until we know what we are getting for it,” he said.

Israel, he said, wants to ensure that it gets “full peace” with Syria, including open borders and diplomatic relations, an agreement that will stand independent of a settlement with the Palestinians and security measures to compensate for its retreat.

But Rabin’s willingness to retreat from the Golan Heights and to give autonomy to the Palestinians has brought sharp criticism from his predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir, and other members of the opposition Likud Party.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials suggested that further moves are possible during or after the Rabin visit to repatriate more rapidly the deported Palestinians still exiled in southern Lebanon. Israel might also agree to declare such mass deportations “an exceptional measure” in return for a Palestinian call to reduce violence as part of the peace negotiations. But officials cautioned against “a breakthrough psychology.”