Persistence--and a Ticking Clock : Christopher helps get Mideast talks going again

President Clinton, waxing ebullient about a matter usually treated with great caution at high levels, now sees a “real opportunity to secure a durable resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

The basis for this optimism is the agreement that Secretary of State Warren Christopher brought back from his latest visits to Jerusalem and Damascus. After months of inactivity and mutual blame-laying, Israel and Syria are ready to resume talking about trying to make peace. The site for their discussions will again be Washington; the time, possibly within a matter of days. Details were worked out in a week of intense shuttle diplomacy by Christopher, during which, as he said, each word of the agreement was minutely analyzed. The honest-broker role in Middle East negotiations is an honorable one, and Christopher has performed it well.

The next round of talks will differ from what went before in two important ways. First the chief negotiators, Israel and Syria’s ambassadors to the United States, have supposedly been granted much greater negotiating authority by their bosses, meaning that not every detail would have to be referred back to their capitals. Whether this will happen in practice of course remains to be seen. Second, a top U.S. expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Dennis Ross, will attend the talks, not just as an observer but as a participant. He will be free to ask questions, seek clarifications, propose compromises. This marks a new level of American activism in these conversations.

No one knows exactly what nudged Israel and Syria back to the negotiating table, but certainly a mutual perception that time is slipping away played a big part in breaking the deadlock.

Next year Israel, like the United States, will hold national elections. But unlike the United States, whose basic Middle East policy is likely to be unchanged no matter who occupies the White House, Israeli voters could elect a government whose policy differs dramatically from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prospective prime minister if the conservative Likud Party forms the next government, has made it clear that under his leadership the peace process with Syria and the Palestinians would be effectively suspended. That grim prospect may also have helped prompt last week’s Israel-Palestinian breakthrough agreement to set a July 1 deadline for resolving major issues that were supposed to have been resolved last year.

All of which may yet prove again that in international relations a ticking clock--or a burning fuse--can be a highly effective mechanism for concentrating minds on the task at hand.