Israeli, Syrian Military Chiefs Meet : Mideast: U.S. talks aim to reassure Jerusalem that giving back Golan will not leave nation open to attack.

WASHINGTON — Against a background of uncharacteristic optimism, the military chiefs of Israel and Syria opened negotiations Tuesday on the security aspects of peace, haggling over measures to reassure Israel that it will not face attack from the Golan Heights if it returns the strategic plateau to Syrian control.

Although many non-military issues also remain unsolved, U.S. officials believe that if the two governments settle security questions, the agreement will give an important boost to negotiations on everything else. Syria insists that any peace treaty must include return of the Golan, captured by Israel during the 1967 Middle East War.

With the military chiefs of staff--Israeli Lt. Gen. Amnon Shahak and Syrian Lt. Gen. Hikmat Shihabi--heading delegations that also include the Israeli and Syrian ambassadors to the United States and two senior generals on each side, Tuesday’s meeting was one of the highest-level ever between the bitter enemies.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher attended the opening of the talks as mediator. Dennis Ross, the Clinton Administration’s top Middle East strategist, and Lt. Gen. Daniel W. Christman, assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expect to participate in every meeting.

This round of negotiations, at Washington’s campus-like Ft. McNair, is scheduled to last just three days, and no one expects dramatic results. But U.S. officials hope that it will set the stage for intensive negotiations, starting in mid-July, between army officers just below the chief of staff level.

Although the stated purpose of the negotiations is to develop measures that will enhance the security of both nations, in reality the issue is to assure Israel that it can safely relinquish the Golan, used by Syria as a platform for artillery attacks on Israel before the 1967 war. Officials said the steps could include early-warning stations, demilitarized zones and mutual reductions in military forces.

Shahak and Shihabi are both taciturn former intelligence officers. Neither would comment before the start of the talks. But State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said both Israel and Syria appear ready for serious peace talks--perhaps the first time that has happened in half a century of animosity.

“We think there is a window of opportunity for agreement this year,” Burns said.

He said that Shihabi, who has been chief of staff for almost 20 years, is “perhaps the second most senior leader” in Syria behind President Hafez Assad. He said that it was “a big step” for Syria to agree to such high-level talks.

Although no one could mistake the Israelis and the Syrians for friends, both governments have been unusually optimistic about the negotiations in recent weeks, and each has tempered its usual vitriol in talking of the other.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told schoolchildren Tuesday that the country’s Zionist founding fathers “never dreamed the Golan Heights would be part of the state of Israel,” a signal that his government is willing to trade away the plateau.

The state-run Syrian press described the military-to-military talks as crucial to regional peace.

Israel extended its law to the Golan, in effect annexing it, in 1981. About 14,000 Jewish settlers live on the plateau, constituting a formidable lobby against Israeli-Syrian peace.