For a Winning Deal, Count Hafez Assad In : Middle East: Keeping Syria isolated is pointless; it will play a big role in the region’s future, productively or as a spoiler.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that the Golan Heights is the stumbling block to a peace agreement between Syria and Israel. True, Israel, sensitive to its security needs, is insisting on monitors on the heights. Syria, sensitive to its rights of sovereignty, objects. But that matter can be solved by the presence of international troops or perhaps even by electronic devices or airborne monitors that would provide advance warning of any aggressive movement.

The real problem has to do with President Hafez Assad’s perception of his role in a comprehensive peace and its aftermath and the perception of other parties of his role.

All parties agree that there can be no Middle East peace without an agreement between Syria and Israel. Since Syria controls Lebanon, such an agreement would mean that all Arab states bordering on Israel would have made peace.

But Assad has been unwilling to deal because he has been cut out of the process of reconfiguring the Middle East since the Gulf War.

With the defection of Saddam Hussein’s two sons-in-law from Iraq to Jordan in August, the area was not only rife with speculation about the stability of Hussein’s regime; more important in this context were the reports of discussions, even negotiations, about what the role of Iraq should be in a new Middle East in the likely event of the regime’s collapse.

These talks had been simmering beneath the surface well before the family defections. Toward the end of the Gulf War, the question of Iraq without Saddam Hussein was a matter of such critical importance that the United States called an early halt to the military operation rather than pursue the Iraqi Republican Guard, already on the run, and capture Baghdad. Apparently, the United States couldn’t decide whether regional security would be better served by a dismembered Iraq, with a pro-Iranian Shiite entity in the south, a Sunni entity in the center and a Kurdish entity in the north.

What was clear enough, especially to Assad, was that the United States and Israel--not any Arab state or set of Arab states--were seeking to be the dominant players in shaping the future. Jordan was then still outside the fold because of its tilt toward Iraq during the Gulf War. Assad’s nose was out of joint at not having been included in the discussions about the fate of Iraq even though he was a U.S. ally in the war.

By the time of the Iraqi defections in August, Jordan was no longer out of the picture. The Israeli-Jordanian agreement was well under way, and Jordan’s interest in reconfiguring the region was coming through loud and clear: an alliance with a successor government in Baghdad. Assad became fearful that such domination of an area from central Iraq to Israel on the west would become a barrier to Syria’s access to the gulf.

Now, even though Saddam Hussein’s demise no longer seems imminent, Assad, always thinking geopolitically, is looking toward working with Turkey to the north and even with “the devil,” Iran, to the east. Such an alliance would not be in the interest of a peaceful Middle East.

Assad must be brought into the peace process. His cooperation is essential for putting in place the last piece of the Middle East puzzle. The United States cannot continue to hold him at arm’s length, an official pariah on the U.S. terrorist list. If we are realistic enough about Bosnia to deal with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, why not Assad? For example (although too late now), would it not have advanced the peace process if the new regional economic development bank had been located in Damascus?

One of the ironies about Assad is that all the while he feels snubbed, he remains determined to deal only through the United States. From personal conversations with him, I know that he will not deal with Israel directly. Given his desire to be seen as the leader of the Arab world, that would be demeaning.

Fair enough. But Washington must understand that no amount of lip service, not even in the form of a visit to Damascus by President Clinton himself, will bring Assad around. If the United States is serious about a Middle East peace, this proud man must be dealt with substantively. Certainly as much of our national interest is at stake as in the former Yugoslavia.