Careful, He’s Not Mr. Nice Guy : Sure, shake Assad’s hand, but don’t go much beyond that

A few hours from now, President Clinton is scheduled to shake hands in Geneva with President Hafez Assad of Syria, a gesture of high-level recognition--if not of approbation--that Washington hopes will help induce one of the Arab world’s more durable and ruthless dictators to resume peace negotiations with Israel.

The Syria-Israel talks, which have been held sporadically along with other bilateral negotiations as part of the U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace process, were suspended last fall. Syria has said there’s nothing more to talk about until Israel first commits itself to withdraw from the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau overlooking northern Israel that Israeli troops occupied in the 1967 war. Israel says discussion of its withdrawal will go on the table as soon as Syria spells out what kind of a peace agreement it is ready to make. Such incompatible conditions inevitably have led to deadlock.

HAPPY AS A SPOILER: It would of course be desirable to re-enlist Syria as a fully involved partner in the peace process, alongside Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization. (Lebanon, the fourth Arab party in the talks, remains under partial occupation by the Syrian army, and is compelled to do what Damascus wants in this regard.)

If Syria commits to ending its long war with Israel the prospects for lasting accommodation in the eastern Mediterranean--including, probably, an explosion in economic growth--would be far brighter. If it stays outside the peace process, Syria almost certainly would continue to play its familiar role of spoiler, supporting the radical Iran-inspired Islamic group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and doing what it could generally to subvert whatever progress Jordan and the Palestinians might make with Israel. If nothing else, Assad would be able to claim that he continues to stand at the head of those Arabs who reject all political and territorial compromises with Israel.

Assad might well indicate to Clinton that he could be drawn back into the peace process if the price was right. One thing he very much wants is for the State Department to drop Syria from its list of countries that support international terrorism. That would be a mistake. Syria has richly earned a place on the list by its deeds. It should be erased from the list not for expedient political reasons but only when it has clearly shown that it no longer supports terrorists.

CREDITOR’S CALL: The fact is that Syria is not playing with a very strong hand when it comes to setting terms for rejoining the peace process. The considerable economic, military and political support Assad could once count on from the Soviet Union has disappeared. Indeed, Russia now wants the hard-pressed Damascus regime to repay its $8-billion debt to Moscow, and reportedly is holding up shipments of military spare parts until it starts to do so. Syria needs good relations and closer economic ties with the West. Even more important for the long term, it would benefit, along with others in the region, from the economic dividend that a successful peace process surely would produce.

Reaching an accommodation with Israel and behaving responsibly after that are not gifts to be bestowed, but something Syria should do in its own interests. Not least, it could help promote Assad’s ambition to restore Damascus as the hub of Arab cultural and political affairs. The self-interest argument is one Clinton should emphasize. What he should not do is hand Assad any unearned rewards to try to lure him back to the conference table. He should not get involved, either, in any substantive negotiations over either the terms for his return or--more dangerously--the terms of an Israel-Syria agreement. The strongest message Clinton can deliver is that peace will bring its own rewards. But peace can come about only through negotiations.