Middle East Talks Resume; Hopes for Syria Accord Rise : Diplomacy: Israeli envoy expects document on agreement with Palestinians to be signed soon. A preliminary treaty with Jordan is also a possibility.

With a 22-month-long deadlock in negotiations swept away by a historic agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, Middle East talks resumed Tuesday amid growing optimism that Israel may also agree on preliminary peace treaties soon with Syria and perhaps Jordan.

Israeli Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich predicted that by the end of next week Israel and the Palestinians will sign a declaration of principles intended to clear the way for Palestinian self-government throughout the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Furthermore, he said, a deal with Syria may not be far behind.

A senior Israeli source said later, however, that although the declaration of principles itself requires no further negotiation, the Israelis and Palestinians have not yet agreed on who will sign the document or where the event will occur.

The Israeli source said the simplest procedure would be to have the pact signed by the delegates to the peace talks. But he said the Palestinians might want the signing done by “higher authority”--a Cabinet member for Israel and a PLO leader for the Palestinians. Despite the recent negotiations with the PLO, the source said, Israel may not be willing to give its old adversary that much recognition.

Also, Elyakim Rubenstein, Israel’s chief delegate in the talks with the Palestinians, may refuse to sign. Rubenstein, a top aide to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, is struggling to reconcile his opposition to the deal with his post as delegation chief, the source said. Rubenstein was not in Washington on Tuesday but may decide to come later this week.

Other disputes linger from the nearly three decades of conflict between Israel and the PLO. Nabil Shaath, the PLO’s top official at the talks, predicted that Israel and the PLO will announce recognition of one another soon, perhaps before the end of the week.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, interviewed on CBS-TV, seemed to indicate that such a step is coming. “If the PLO will stop being a PLO--namely, will divorce terrorism, will renounce the covenant that called for the destruction of Israel--then we shall not have any problem with the PLO,” Peres said. “It will become a regular political party and we shall gladly talk with them.”

In the Tunisian capital of Tunis, Bassam abu Sharif, a political adviser to PLO chief Yasser Arafat, said that the PLO charter calling for the destruction of Israel is “null and void,” the Reuters news agency reported. He said the PLO’s peace negotiations with Israel “superseded the charter.”

But the senior Israeli source in Washington said that recognition “is not certain yet.”

Israeli and Palestinian delegates said that the Israel-PLO agreement, already approved by the Israeli Cabinet, goes far beyond the initial stage of Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho, eventually providing for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from all West Bank and Gaza population centers.

For the first time, Palestinian police will enforce law and order in the territories and an elected Palestinian council will make basic governmental decisions, they said.

Although the Israel-PLO talks in Oslo, Norway, that produced the accord took place without U.S. officials or representatives of Arab governments, the agreement seems to have cleared away a major obstacle to Israel’s negotiations with Syria and Jordan.

Under guidelines for the U.S.-mediated talks, which began with the Madrid conference in October, 1991, Israel bargains separately with Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians. But Syria and Jordan, reluctant to be seen as trying to make peace behind the backs of other Arabs, had been unwilling to complete a deal with Israel until there was progress on the Palestinian track.

After meeting with the Israeli delegation, chief Syrian delegate Mouafak Allaf said, “Because of the interdependence of all tracks, I am sure that if there is a genuine progress on one track, that will help progress on others.”

Ambassador Rabinovich, who doubles as Israel’s chief delegate in talks with the Syrians, said that it is unrealistic to expect a Syria-Israel deal before the current round of talks ends next week. But he added, “Our Syrian counterparts spoke of trying to achieve it during this round or next, which I think makes it more realistic.”

Israel and Syria hammered out many of the articles of a preliminary peace agreement last October, but then the talks stalled and no progress was reported.

Jordan’s King Hussein said earlier this year that his government and Israel also had virtually completed a preliminary treaty but that it would not be signed until after progress was recorded on the Israel-Palestinian track.

Despite the euphoria, however, Arab, Israeli and American negotiators cautioned that much hard work will be required to turn the preliminary declarations into detailed treaties.

“We are beginning a new but very difficult phase in which the causes of the conflict are being gradually unraveled, and this is going to take some time and a lot of work,” said Hanan Ashrawi, spokeswoman for the Palestinian delegation.