THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS--A PATH TO PEACE? : Assad Gives Syrians Something New--Himself and Clinton ‘Live’ : Mideast: Damascus also cancels an obligatory power cut to ensure viewers and listeners tune in.

As they huddled around a tiny television set in the cramped chill of their Damascus apartment, Abdul Razak Suleimani and his family witnessed something historic Sunday afternoon.

For them and millions of other Syrians, it was not so much the fact that their president, Hafez Assad, stood beside President Clinton at a news conference far away in Switzerland, announcing bold hopes for a new era of peace, stability and even friendship between Syria and its old enemies.

For the first time in the history of Assad’s quarter-century rule, their president let them watch it--live and uncensored--on state-run Syrian Television.

“This is the great surprise,” said Suleimani, a 32-year-old karate instructor who, like most Syrians his age, has grown up in a society so tightly controlled that every broadcast, newspaper, magazine and textbook has been heavily censored and sanitized by Assad’s regime.

“Before, the other three times our president met an American President, no one even knew it was happening. This time, everybody knows about this meeting. I think 75% of the people are watching a television somewhere right now. And the rest, they are listening to the radio.”

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But history didn’t stop there. For the first time the Suleimanis could remember, the government canceled their neighborhood’s obligatory afternoon power cut, a scheduled 1 p.m. brownout that is testimony to the hardships and poverty that have come with Syria’s isolation from the West.

“I am sure that today they did not cut it so we could watch the meeting in Geneva,” Suleimani said.

He was right. Not a single home was left without electricity in all of Damascus for an event that Syria’s official media proclaimed a turning point for the Middle East peace process. Television sets flickered in neighborhoods both rich and poor. Cafes became stages for the event, and, throughout the city, most cars blared Radio Damascus.

In Syrian terms, it was a dramatic taste of what many here hope will become a feast of new freedoms if, as Assad predicted Sunday, “a new generation” of peace arrives in a land still technically in a state of war with Israel.

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In an interview on the eve of the summit, Syrian Information Minister Mohammed Salman confirmed that the unprecedented decision to broadcast the Clinton-Assad news conference live via satellite to every Syrian home was part of Assad’s broader policy to gradually liberalize what traditionally has been one of the world’s strictest police states.

“You could describe it as a natural development for Syrian society at this stage,” Salman said.

But it was a development that was received cautiously.

Few Syrians, in fact, would publicly voice specific reactions to the outcome of Sunday’s summit.

Most preferred to wait until after their president’s return--until they had a chance to read today’s papers and hear the state radio broadcasts that set the official line.

It was through those official media that Assad’s government built the backdrop to the Geneva summit in an equally unprecedented tone of optimistic expectation that most analysts said was meant to prepare the Syrian people for Assad’s agreement to discuss normalizing relations with Israel if it agrees to return all of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of the occupied Arab lands.

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What most Syrians did speak about during and after the historic broadcast, though, was an almost universal sense of pride and confidence in their president, mixed heavily with faint hope and a strong, lingering distrust of an enemy they have been taught to hate for decades.

“God willing, there will be peace. But in a good way,” Suleimani’s father, Faiz, said as he looked away from the tiny television set for a moment.

“This should not be just like an injection that is good for only a few hours,” his son interrupted. “If we are fighting for a long time, you and me, like we Arabs and Israelis have been doing, I think it will take a long time to make peace and be friends again.”

“Israel is asking for the peace, but every night we are watching on this television how they are killing all the Palestinian people. By voice, we can say, ‘We want peace.’ But really, in our heart, we feel very sorry about this.”

When the conversation turned to Syria’s long-strained relations with America, though, Suleimani’s family voiced its most unqualified optimism.

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After years of isolation from the West, largely because of U.S. counterterrorism laws that condemn Syria for harboring radical Palestinian groups, many Syrians took the positive tone of Sunday’s news conference as a distinct harbinger of change.

“People are thinking that now, after this meeting, it will be like America here,” Suleimani said with a laugh. “Now, we are going to be friends with America. So now, maybe we will also be partners. And this is a good thing. Because if we are partners, you have to take something from me, and I have to take something from you.

“This is the only way to do something with dignity, with respect.”