Syria Agrees to Resume Peace Talks : Mideast: Assad reverses stance in exchange for Christopher’s promise of summit with Clinton. Lebanon will also restart negotiations with Israel.

The Syrian government, which had vowed to stay away from peace talks until Israel pledged in advance to withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, agreed Thursday to resume negotiations in exchange for vaguely worded American assurances and the promise of a summit with President Clinton.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced that Israel will resume separate peace talks with both Syria and Lebanon next month under a revised procedure intended to reinvigorate the process, which stalled last September after Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization reached their breakthrough agreement.

Christopher said the chiefs of the Syrian and Lebanese delegations will consult with U.S. officials in early January in advance of meetings Jan. 18 with Israel’s chief delegates.

Formal negotiations with full delegations at the table will resume in late January or early February.

A senior State Department official said Washington hopes that the meetings between delegation chiefs--which may be conducted in secret--will supplant the more formal talks involving full delegations, which have become sterile exercises in public posturing.

Christopher said Clinton’s meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Geneva in mid-January will focus on the peace talks. The purpose is to draw Assad directly into the process.

“This meeting . . . will help to put in place a vital cornerstone in our efforts to build a comprehensive and lasting peace,” Christopher said.

The planned summit also enhances the international prestige of the Syrian leader, who is in danger of political isolation after the disintegration of his superpower patron, the Soviet Union.

The prospect of a high-profile meeting with Clinton may have been the sweetener that persuaded Assad to resume the talks despite earlier Syrian assertions that there is no point in negotiating until Israel agrees to withdraw from the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War.

An editorial this week in Tishrin, the newspaper of Assad’s ruling Baath Party, put it starkly: “What is required to resume the negotiations is an open and official announcement by Israel committing to withdrawal from all of the Golan and South Lebanon.”

The summit with Clinton, plus the consultations with American officials that will precede the resumption of talks with Israel, also served as an inducement to Damascus.

Assad’s government has made it clear that it is more concerned with its evolving relationship with the United States than it is with peace with Israel.

Nevertheless, Syria clearly lowered its sights in agreeing to go back to the bargaining table without Israel promising to give up the Golan.

Christopher met Assad twice, Sunday and Thursday, to gain the Syrian president’s approval for the talks.

He won the acceptance of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri with a single telephone call Thursday morning. Lebanon is strongly influenced by Syria and has followed the lead of Damascus in the peace process.

Christopher said talks at the chief of delegation level will resume in all four of the separate but parallel negotiations matching Israel with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians.

Since the last full round of talks in September, Israel and the PLO have signed a peace agreement, and Israel and Jordan have completed a “framework” for a peace treaty.

But there has been no movement on the Syrian and Lebanese tracks. Reviving those negotiations was the primary reason for Christopher’s weeklong tour of the Middle East.

U.S. officials expressed guarded optimism that Syria will consider the sort of compromises needed to bridge the gap between Israeli and Syrian positions.

The officials pointed to the two gestures Assad made Sunday to improve the atmosphere for the talks--an agreement to help U.S. investigators look for Israeli soldiers missing in Lebanon and a promise to permit the 800 or so remaining Syrian Jews to leave the country by the end of this month if they wish.

The officials called attention to a remark by Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh that Damascus considered peace to be “a strategic option,” indicating that Syria considers a settlement with Israel to be an end in itself and not a means to other ends.

One official said the formulation, which Assad and Shareh also made in the private meetings with Christopher, marked a shift in Syrian emphasis in approaching peace negotiations.

Nevertheless, the Israel-Syria negotiations are sure to be difficult. Syria has not budged from its demand for a return of every foot of Golan territory. And Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has made it clear that he is not anxious to take on the task of selling the Israeli public on even a partial withdrawal from the Golan at the same time he is trying to win support for Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Israel-PLO agreement, signed in Washington on Sept. 13, requires Israel to begin withdrawing its army from Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho on Monday.

However, negotiations over details of Palestinian self-government have bogged down, placing the target date in jeopardy.