Israelis Say Syria Has Promised to Restrain Guerrillas : Mideast: Washington reportedly won pledge regarding Hezbollah in Lebanon. It keeps peace prospects alive.

Israel on Sunday appeared ready to continue its peace talks with Syria after receiving U.S. assurances that Damascus will press Lebanon-based Hezbollah guerrillas to stop their rocket attacks on Israel.

The developments came after a weekend of telephone calls by Secretary of State Warren Christopher to both sides. Israel said Sunday that Syria, a key Hezbollah ally, had assured Christopher that it will help restrain the militia group.

Hezbollah rocket attacks Friday killed one Israeli and injured 20 others. On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin threatened to launch massive retaliatory attacks if the incidents continued. He also asked Christopher’s help in pressuring the Syrians.

There were no reports of additional Hezbollah attacks Sunday.

If Hezbollah continues to hold its fire, it will help defuse what had threatened to become a major obstacle to a possible peace agreement between Israel and Syria.

On Sunday, Christopher said he was “somewhat encouraged” by recent developments in the Israeli-Syrian negotiations. “There are a number of gaps, but I think they’re not unbridgeable gaps,” he said.

He also discussed his push to tighten existing U.S. economic sanctions against Iran, particularly to prevent subsidiaries of U.S. oil companies from buying Iranian oil and reselling it on world markets.

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He said the fact that the United States allows U.S. firms to trade with Iran has become “a handicap” to policy-makers trying to persuade other countries, such as Russia, to withhold aid and technical expertise from Iran.

“When I go to another country and say, ‘Look, stop giving concessions to Iran,’ they throw this back in my face and say, ‘How about this?’ and ‘How about that?’ ” he said. “And so I think we need to toughen our sanctions.”

Christopher also reiterated U.S. warnings that Iraq will gain no political concessions from the United States if it continues to detain two U.S. civilians who crossed the Iraqi border from Kuwait last month.

And he said he is satisfied that the CIA has stopped sending military aid to Guatemala following disclosures that an army officer there with CIA ties may have had a part in the killing of an American man as well as of the Guatemalan husband of another American.

President Clinton has ordered an investigation of the matter, including charges that the CIA continued to make payments to the Guatemalan military after then-President George Bush cut off military aid following the slayings.

U.S. officials said the thrust of Christopher’s message during his telephone negotiations over the weekend was to urge Israel and Syria to enforce a 1993 accord in which both sides pledged not to attack civilian targets and to limit the scope of their hostilities.

But Christopher refused to confirm or deny reports that Syrian President Hafez Assad had told him that Damascus is prepared to begin low-level diplomatic relations with Jerusalem even before the Israelis fully withdraw from the disputed Golan Heights. “If I said they were true or false, then I would be confirming the substance of the negotiations,” he said.

Christopher made his remarks on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation.”

There was no immediate indication as to what the Administration will decide when it debates Christopher’s proposal to tighten sanctions against Iran.

The issue attracted attention last month when a subsidiary of Conoco, a U.S.-based oil company, announced that it had struck a deal with Tehran to develop new Iranian oil fields, despite the fact that Washington considers Iran a key force in backing global terrorism.

Although Conoco voluntarily canceled its contract with Tehran in the face of an impending executive order from Clinton banning such deals, Christopher and some members of Congress have charged that existing laws provide too many loopholes by which U.S. companies can legally trade with Iran.

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