Mubarak Says Syria Is Showing Flexibility : Mideast: Egyptian president predicts a breakthrough this year in peace talks between Israel and Damascus.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Sunday that Syria has become “much more flexible” and predicted a breakthrough in its peace talks with Israel before the end of the year.

In a summit with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to brief him on his latest mediation contacts in Damascus, Mubarak said he is optimistic that U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s next visit to the region Aug. 8 will produce even more concrete results.

The Egyptian leader, who met with Syrian President Hafez Assad after Christopher’s last round of shuttle diplomacy, said the two sides are making progress in their standoff over Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, captured by Israel from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

“Having talks with him two, three, four hours, I can tell what is in his chest. I can tell you he wants peace,” Mubarak said of Assad.

“My impression is that Syria is really interested in peace. I hope Syria could reach an agreement by the end of this year.”

But Rabin said Israel is waiting for concrete gestures from Syria to signal that it is ready to make peace.

He pointed to the interim agreements signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization and Jordan as pathways to trust between Israelis and Syrians, a necessary prelude to genuine peacemaking.

“Syria has to do something. It needs public diplomacy, it needs public utterances that will bring the people of Israel to be convinced that Syria is eager to have peace,” Rabin told reporters.

“I’ll give you an example: President Sadat (the late Egyptian president) came to Jerusalem. Believe me, he broke down all the walls between Egypt and Israel by the mere fact that he came there. Even without signing a peace treaty, we had a trilateral meeting in Washington in which the President of the United States, the king of Jordan and myself shook hands, were together openly. We haven’t seen anything of this kind, not even on a smaller scale, by Syria,” Rabin said.

He said the fact that Syrian television broadcast part of the signing ceremony with Jordan “might be the beginning of a sign.”

Privately, Egyptian officials are upbeat about the prospects for a peace agreement but say little concrete progress has been made, even with Christopher’s two trips to Damascus and Jerusalem and Mubarak’s mediation last week.

Osama Baz, Mubarak’s chief political adviser and a central diplomatic figure in the peace process, said there has been progress on a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

For months, the two sides have appeared close to an accord on the principle of an Israeli withdrawal in exchange for a peace treaty, but have fallen apart over the issue of how much of a withdrawal and how fast, in exchange for how much peace, and how fast.

“It’s a matter of mistrust between both sides,” Mubarak sighed.

But Baz said talks have focused on “what are the profits that they both expect to gain, and what are the benefits in the event that they reach mutual understanding. Both are using a more realistic view of the next steps that are needed . . . what are the stages that are needed to accomplish and what will be the amount of time needed to accomplish them,” he said.

“After all the meetings and the rounds of talks, there has come a much clearer image of what is expected in the future,” he said. “We hope within the next 10 weeks to reach some advancement, because anything accomplished in these talks will back up and reinforce what has been accomplished so far.”

Mubarak also questioned Rabin on the sensitive issue of Jerusalem. Israel’s pledge to give Jordan a special role in overseeing the holy Muslim shrines there has raised alarm signals among Palestinians, who see Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Mubarak reiterated Egypt’s position that the status of Jerusalem must be left to talks on the final status of the Palestinian territories, to begin after two years.

Rabin sought to downplay any alarm, emphasizing that the agreement with Jordan only recognized Jordan’s role over the past 27 years as caretaker of the holy shrines.

“What was signed in Washington (with Jordan) was basically to respect the existing agreements about the Muslim holy shrines that are held by the . . . Waqfs (religious endowments) ministry financed by Jordan for the last 27 years,” he said.