Assad-Clinton Talks Raise Hopes for Peace : Mideast: Syrian leader for first time says he wants ‘normal, peaceful relations’ with Israel. At end of Geneva meeting, President calls him indispensable to process.

Syrian President Hafez Assad met with President Clinton on Sunday and raised hopes for a breakthrough in the Middle East peace talks by declaring for the first time that he hopes to achieve “normal, peaceful relations” with Israel.

Following a five-hour summit meeting at the end of Clinton’s eight-day trip to Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Syrian leader declared that if pending negotiations succeed, “we are ready to sign peace now.”

“If the leaders of Israel have sufficient courage to respond to this kind of peace, a new era of security and stability . . . (with) normal, peaceful relations among all shall dawn,” he said in the final sentence of a formal statement delivered in an unprecedented news conference with Clinton.

For all the 45 years of Israel’s existence, Syria has rejected peace on any terms the Jewish state could conceivably accept.

For the first time, senior U.S. officials are now saying, Assad, perhaps the most careful and cunning leader in the Middle East, has specifically committed himself to negotiations aimed at establishing “normal” relations--a code word suggesting that he is ready to accept Israel’s insistence that any final accord provide not only security guarantees but trade and open borders.

In return, Clinton publicly praised Assad as the indispensable player on the Arab side of the peace process. “I believe Syria is the key to the achievement of an enduring and comprehensive peace that finally will put an end to the conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors,” Clinton said.

Assad has long sought recognition as the principal leader of the Arab side--which accounts in part for his hostile reaction to last year’s secret negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which took place without Assad’s knowledge or participation.

At best, negotiating the details of a settlement between Israel and Syria--which Clinton emphasized is primarily up to the parties directly involved--will be a long, difficult process, with endless possibilities for failure.

For one thing, Assad appeared to hold firm on his insistence that peace must involve simultaneous Israeli settlements with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians. The United States also favors a comprehensive settlement but opposes delaying individual settlements--between Israel and the PLO, for example--until all have been worked out.

Should Assad cling to his position, he could delay or possibly even derail the four-way talks that are scheduled to resume in Washington soon.

*

At Sunday’s summit, Clinton did not seek a detailed commitment from Assad, long considered one of Israel’s most implacable foes and an obstacle to peace in the troubled region, on exactly how far he would go toward the kind of normalization Israel wants.

Instead, U.S. negotiators sought movement on the broad issue of Syria’s willingness to seek the kind of peace that Israel says it must have if it is to return control of the strategically sensitive Golan Heights to Assad.

And Administration officials insisted that the change in Assad’s language at the joint news conference with Clinton should convince an uneasy Israeli public that the negotiations should be pursued vigorously.

Assad used “terminology that has not been used before,” one Administration official said. “From that standpoint we have seen new ground broken.”

At the press conference, Clinton himself said Assad has made a “clear, forthright and very important statement on normal, peaceful relations.”

The talks, conducted amid extremely tight security, were also a landmark for Clinton, marking the first time he has taken on direct negotiations with the head of a state that has been such an implacable adversary.

Damascus, among other things, remains on the official U.S. list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

*

Clinton brought up, but got no satisfaction on, U.S. objections to Syria’s harboring of Palestinian terrorists, which has led to economic sanctions that Assad badly wants to eliminate.

“There was no substantive response from the Syrians,” an Administration official said.

Assad was somewhat more flexible when Clinton raised continuing allegations that Syrians were involved in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people.

The Syrian leader said he would look into the latest allegations, a statement officials said they found “encouraging.”

Both the joint press conference and the texts of the statements the two leaders read before taking questions had been under negotiation for two weeks. Final agreement was reached Saturday night by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh.

Assad has met with three U.S. Presidents but never before consented to hold a joint news conference. The two men looked grave when they appeared after their closed-door sessions, although U.S. aides said the talks had gone smoothly and even included “light moments.”

*

Reflecting the historic animosities of the Middle East, Syrian officials had tried to exclude all of the dozens of Israeli reporters who had flocked to Geneva for the talks, which had received a heavy buildup in the Mideast. Faced with Israeli protests, U.S. officials insisted that one Israeli reporter, from the newspaper Maariv, be allowed entrance as part of a small contingent of international journalists.

U.S. officials, who had been trying to downplay expectations for the summit, sought to do so again Sunday. “Everyone’s trying not to overstate this,” one said.

Even before the meeting, Christopher had asserted that “frankly, if there’s an important result, we probably won’t see it for several months.”

The talks had centered on proposals that the Israelis would agree to recognize Syrian authority over the Golan Heights and begin a troop withdrawal, or at least a partial withdrawal. The Israelis took over the strategically important plateau during the 1967 Middle East War.

There are now about 13,000 Israelis in the heights, which dominate the Galilee Basin and lie only 40 miles from Damascus. Before Israel captured the Golan in 1967, Syrian artillery on the heights regularly shelled communities throughout northern Israel. Many Israelis believe that their military control of the high ground has helped keep the peace.

Assad, in turn, has his own wish list. He wants to be dropped from the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism because of the sanctions that listing entails. And he is under pressure to forge economic ties with Israel--and the United States--to strengthen a domestic economy that has been hurt by the contraction of Russian aid and military hardware.

Even if the talks lead nowhere, they have brought Assad one concrete product: the prestige he will gain in the Mideast for appearing with the leader of the single remaining superpower.

* HISTORY MADE IN SYRIA

With summit, Syrians get first taste of uncensored history. A6

RELATED STORIES: A6-8