U.S. Role on Golan Would Be Limited : Mideast: Defense chief Perry sees any eventual American troops as monitors of an Israeli-Syrian peace.

U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry on Monday reaffirmed the Clinton Administration’s willingness to send troops to the Golan Heights to secure an Israeli-Syrian peace treaty but indicated that their role would be strictly limited.

Perry’s two-day visit here focused on regional problems such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and on shared U.S. and Israeli fears that Iran may soon become a nuclear power.

At a Tel Aviv news conference Monday night capping Perry’s visit, Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said he believes that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within “seven to 15 years.”

“The prime minister’s assessment of seven to 15 years is a reasonable estimate based on the information we now have,” Perry said. “I did suggest, though, that there are various ways (the Iranians) might find to shortcut the process and get there sooner.”

Perry also touched on an area of friction between Israel and the United States, saying that he and Rabin agreed to have an already existing joint U.S.-Israeli committee pursue reports that Israel violated U.S. law by selling China U.S. technology used to develop Israel’s Lavi fighter plane.

“They are actually looking at it in some detail right now,” Perry said of the committee. “I have every confidence that the Israeli government will support this process and make a thorough investigation of (the reported violation).”

Rabin strongly denied that Israel has made any illegal sales.

“Israel is not stupid (enough) to risk what we get from the United States by even the slightest temptation to sell something,” Rabin said, referring to the $1.8 billion in annual military assistance that Israel gets from the United States. “We have to bear in mind that we have to keep all our commitments in accordance with the United States laws.”

During his visit, Perry dismissed Israeli news reports that he had come to Israel to outline a plan for U.S. deployment on the Golan Heights.

“The question of U.S. involvement is premature at this time,” Perry told reporters after viewing the Golan during a helicopter tour of northern Israel. “Until we have the peace plan and then the details and what kind of participation is requested, it’s premature.”

Israeli-Syrian peace talks have been deadlocked for months over the question of how far Israel will withdraw its troops and related security issues, and over whether Syria will accept full normalization of relations with Israel.

The prospect of any deployment of U.S. troops on the Golan has become a sensitive political issue both here and in Washington. Clinton Administration officials have said that as many as 1,000 U.S. troops might be sent to the heights as part of a multinational peacekeeping force, once an Israeli-Syrian treaty is signed.

Even a symbolic presence of U.S. troops could be politically important for Rabin. Opinion polls show he will have a hard time convincing the Israeli public that an Israeli withdrawal from the heights will not leave Israel strategically vulnerable to a surprise attack from Syria.

But some Republican lawmakers, conservative analysts and Pentagon planners argue against positioning U.S. troops on the 18-mile-wide plateau that overlooks northern Israel. U.S. troops could become a target for terrorist attack, or their presence might draw the United States into an Israeli-Syrian war if a peace pact fails, deployment opponents contend.

Perry spoke Monday of the limited role any U.S. troops would play on the Golan.

“We have provided some monitors in the Sinai peninsula to help monitor the accord after the Camp David agreement,” he said. “It is conceivable that we will be asked to do something like that in the Golan. That would be not providing security; these would not be security forces. It would be strictly monitors to monitor the peace process. If the parties asked us to do that, we would certainly consider that request. We would have to consult with our Congress first, but the President has already indicated a willingness to do that.”

U.S. opponents of deployment have found an ally in the opposition Likud Party, which opposes any Israeli withdrawal from the Golan. Likud leaders have traveled to the United States to lobby both Congress and American Jewish organizations on the issue of U.S. troop deployment on the heights.

“From our point of view, no American mother should worry about the fate of her children in the Middle East,” Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told reporters Sunday after meeting with Perry. “This is a basic Israeli interest.”

Government officials here point to the successful deployment of about 800 U.S. troops in the southern Sinai--where they are part of a multinational peacekeeping force that monitors the Egypt-Israel peace accord--as their model for a U.S. deployment on the Golan.

But the two deployments would not be comparable, according to Dore Gold, a military analyst with Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.

“In the Sinai, the U.S. force is not on major invasion routes,” said Gold, who has written an analysis of a potential U.S. deployment on the Golan.

“The invasion routes in the Sinai are in the north and central part of the peninsula,” he said. “The U.S. troops are in the south, far away from major Israeli and Egyptian troop concentrations. In the Golan, the U.S. troops would be very close to military routes of access on the Golan and close to large Israeli and Syrian troop concentrations.”

Researcher Danny Sabel contributed to this report from Tel Aviv.