Christopher Conveys Syria’s Reply to Israeli Proposal : Mideast: Official says Jerusalem is encouraged by response to peace initiative--but not ready for talks.

Amid a growing backlash here against Israel’s new peace initiative with Syria, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher held two rounds of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Monday to convey the reply from Damascus.

An Israeli official later said the government is encouraged by the “serious, comprehensive and detailed response” from Syrian President Hafez Assad but that the response is not yet enough to jump-start mediation that has bogged down since the 1991 peace conference in Madrid.

At least one more round of Christopher shuttle diplomacy will be needed in mid-May before direct talks resume between Israel and Syria, he said.

But “for the first time, the Syrians have presented a comprehensive package to counter (Israel’s proposal) that addresses the major issues and does so with a degree of detail and concreteness that in some respects has been absent to date. That’s a novelty,” the official said.

The downside is that the response “established a gap (with the Israeli offer) and it’s considerable on most issues. And it’s not a comfortable gap to begin negotiating with,” he said at a briefing for the American press.

Predicting that negotiations will be long and arduous, he said that Israel is in “no hurry” to answer back.

The Israelis are also concerned that the Syrian response does not integrate all critical elements--including timing of a land-for-peace swap in the Golan Heights, security guarantees and the issue of 15,000 Israeli settlers--as the Israeli proposal did.

“We have something to hold on to, but no huge gaps have been bridged. There were no concessions,” another Israeli official said.

The Israelis are seeking a more high-profile Syrian contact for negotiations and gestures to reciprocate their recent actions. Rabin was reportedly particularly disappointed that Assad was unprepared to make the gesture on peace that he did last month--at a cost, politically--when he indicated a willingness not to let Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights stand in the way of peace with Syria. The strategic heights were captured by Israel in 1967.

Christopher’s second visit to Israel came amid increasingly contentious debate and demonstrations over the idea of abandoning the Golan Heights--in stark contrast to public consensus on a deal with the Palestinians on the occupied Gaza Strip. Rabin is scheduled to fly to Cairo today for a final meeting with Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat to resolve the final issues on Palestinian autonomy in Jericho and the Gaza Strip.

The historic signing of the formal pact is set for Wednesday; there will be about 2,500 invited guests and 40 foreign ministers from around the world--an assemblage surpassing the pomp of the signing of the initial agreement on the White House lawn last fall.

But on the Golan Heights issue, Rabin is already facing resistance that could become one of the biggest challenges of his career, Israeli officials and political scientists here say.

A stormy debate raged in the Israeli Knesset on Monday as the right-wing opposition introduced three no-confidence motions. And seven members of Rabin’s own Labor Party strongly criticized the Golan initiative.

The center of the criticism is that Israel is making serious offers and potentially endangering its own security but receiving little in return. In the Labor Party, some denounced any retreat from full Israeli control of the Golan Heights, while virtually all complained that Rabin is telling them nothing about negotiations.

To prevent Israel’s bargaining position from becoming public and arousing further opposition, the ever-secretive Rabin has brought only four Israeli officials into the negotiations: Shimon Peres, foreign minister; Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, chief of staff; Itamar Rabinovitch, Israel’s ambassador to Washington and chief negotiator with Syria, and Maj. Gen. Danny Yatom, military commander on the West Bank.

In the Knesset, Peres vowed that the government “will not be frightened or scared off” by the criticism. And to an angry caucus from his Labor Party, Rabin countered that a further stalemate in negotiations with Damascus would bring the risk of an alliance uniting Syria with Iran and perhaps even Iraq--an alliance that could well have nuclear capability in a decade.

To those who insist that Israeli settlements, whether in the Golan Heights, the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, are an important element in the country’s security, Rabin replied, “Settlements have a minor security value--minor, minor, minor.

“It is the Israel Defense Force that brings security, not settlements,” he said. “I am outraged that I have to keep an entire battalion of paratroopers in Hebron and am unable to use it to fight terrorism. . . . We are paying in blood for ruling over another people.”

Although the three no-confidence motions were defeated, few opponents within the Knesset or the Labor Party appeared to be placated.

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