Israel and Syria Agree to Restart Peace Talks : Mideast: Christopher obtains pledges. Envoys to U.S. will probably begin negotiations before month’s end.

Israel and Syria on Tuesday agreed to resume face-to-face peace talks after an interruption of three months, although the two sides remain so distrustful of each other that it took more than 12 hours for Secretary of State Warren Christopher to tie down every detail.

Christopher said the two nations’ ambassadors to the United States--Israeli Itamar Rabinovich and Syrian Walid Moualem--will conduct the talks in Washington, probably starting before the month’s end.

Christopher announced the agreement at the end of a nine-day trip to the Middle East that he described as “the most satisfactory” of his 11 visits to the region. As a result of his efforts, he said, a “sour” atmosphere has been replaced by renewed negotiations on both the Syrian and Palestinian peace tracks.

Although the deal was cut hours before he arrived in the region, Israel and the Palestinians agreed last week to complete their negotiations over Palestinian rule in the West Bank by July 1, restarting a long-stalled process.

“This underscores the importance of continued U.S. involvement in the region,” Christopher said.

Taken together, the renewed talks between the Israelis and their two major adversaries appeared to be something of a breakthrough, although the negotiations really do little more than return the peace process to where it was late last year. But U.S. officials say they hope the latest talks will also be able to tackle some of the substantive disputes that blocked earlier efforts.

In contrast to the earlier talks, in which the ambassadors did little more than read formal statements to each other, Christopher said Rabinovich and Moualem will have wide latitude to engage in give-and-take bargaining.

“Both ambassadors . . . have the full confidence of their leaders,” he said, noting that each envoy attended meetings he conducted this week with their respective leaders, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Syrian President Hafez Assad, so “they have a better understanding of the parameters” their governments are putting on the negotiations.

Dennis Ross, the State Department’s point man in the Arab-Israeli peace process, will participate in the Rabinovich-Moualem talks. A senior U.S. official said Ross will ask questions, make suggestions and help focus discussions.

Oded Ben Ami, Rabin’s spokesman, said, “This is how we hoped Secretary Christopher’s talks would end and what we were working toward.”

Although Israel was clearly more eager than Syria to resume the talks, a senior U.S. official said Jerusalem was not required to make any sort of concession to bring Damascus back to the table.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin said it is not enough just to resume talks. But he added: “Both sides know more or less what the settlement is. If they want peace with us, I don’t think we need a lot of time to reach agreement.”

Before the agreement was announced, Rabin said that even with renewed negotiations, “there is no agreement on the four main concepts, without which we can’t achieve peace.” The Israeli government wants an agreement to cover diplomatic relations, a new border between the two countries, a timetable for Israeli troop withdrawal from the Golan Heights and a detailed agreement on security matters.

Christopher said the United States is also urging Israel and Syria to renew talks between army chiefs of staff. Those discussions broke off after a single round, underlying the sharp differences on security matters between the longtime enemies. U.S. officials said the military-to-military bargaining was not set, although Ross plans to visit Israel and Syria in the next week or so to try to wrap up details for such negotiations.

Christopher had hoped to wrap up the agreement on ambassador-level talks with a quick morning of diplomacy and then return to Washington. But as he said wistfully at the start of an 8 p.m. news conference, “After all, this is the Middle East”--where nothing is as simple as it seems to outsiders.

He had to delay his return home until today.

Everything had started on schedule when Christopher met for an hour over breakfast with Rabin in Jerusalem before flying to Damascus, where he conferred with Assad for two more hours. Officials said the deal was almost done after that meeting but that final details were not fixed until well after dark.

Christopher said he had difficulty reaching Rabin by telephone because the Israeli prime minister was addressing Parliament and later conferring with British Prime Minister John Major, who is paying an official visit to Israel.

Once U.S. officials contacted the Israeli leader, they had to review minor changes with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh before tying it all down with one more telephone call to Jerusalem.

In midafternoon, U.S. officials announced that Christopher was about to hold a news conference. While reporters waited in a hotel room, Damascus-based U.S. diplomats scurried to find a television crew, then sent a messenger to the embassy to get an American flag. Everything then was postponed for more frustrating hours.

“These are very important issues to the parties,” Christopher said. “I wanted to be sure there was full agreement between the leaders. Nothing is taken for granted. No single word . . . goes without analysis.”

Although resumption of direct talks would appear to be a fairly straightforward step with few nuances, a senior U.S. official said that before the two countries would agree, Christopher had to develop a detailed summary of each side’s position.

Times staff writer Michael Parks in Jerusalem contributed to this report.