U.S. Tries to Revive Israel-Syria Talks : Mideast: Clinton meets with Peres and orders Christopher to region to explore new ideas.

President Clinton announced Monday that the United States will launch a new effort to revive deadlocked negotiations between Israel and Syria aimed at concluding the final stage of a Middle East peace.

After talks with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Clinton said that Secretary of State Warren Christopher will fly to the region later this week to discuss new ideas put forward by Peres.

“We agree that to close the circle of peace, it will take more intensive and more practical negotiations,” in which both sides will have to make a greater effort, Clinton said at a joint White House news conference with Peres. “I am determined that nothing, nothing will deter us from this task in the weeks and the months ahead.”

The president indicated that he is optimistic about the prospects for movement, in part because the atmosphere in the region has changed since the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin last month by a Jewish extremist opposed to territorial concessions.

“Sad as it is to say, the Syrian leader and the Syrian people now see the exceptional price that former Prime Minster Rabin and Prime Minister Peres are willing to pay in their search for peace,” the president said. “I think that is the fundamental new reality here.”

Clinton also talked by telephone Monday with Syrian President Hafez Assad, who told him that he is committed to moving the peace process forward and reaching an early agreement with Israel, Clinton said.

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Administration sources said that Peres feels strongly about concluding a peace treaty with Syria and Lebanon within six months--before next year’s Israeli elections.

At the news conference, Peres said that Israel seeks “an opening of a new, maybe a final, chapter--the end of war in the Middle East in its totality. Peace between Syria and Israel and between Lebanon and Israel will leave no reason whatsoever for the continuation of belligerency.”

Peace with Lebanon is widely considered part and parcel of a Syrian-Israeli settlement.

Peres stressed the urgency of renewed efforts. “There is no time now for political vacations. . . . We intend to continue the momentum full-speed ahead,” he said.

“It is my hope that President Assad will join us soon on this historic journey.”

One of the ideas Peres put forward focuses on the “totality” of peace. He would like to include a broader signing that would bring in many Arab states beyond the four--Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon--that along with the Palestinians have waged direct war against Israel, a senior official in the Israeli delegation said Monday.

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The so-called pan-Mideast solution may mean that Israel would be prepared to acquiesce to a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights--seized from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War--in exchange for a full peace with virtually all the Arab world.

“The depth of withdrawal should be equal to the depth of peace,” the Israeli senior official told reporters after the Clinton-Peres meeting.

Yet the official denied persistent reports that Peres is prepared to compromise on Israel’s demand for an early warning system on the Golan Heights to be able to detect military movement against Israel.

The last round of talks between Israeli and Syrian army chiefs in June deadlocked over Rabin’s demand for an early warning system. Israel has said that it will not even consider a full withdrawal unless it has alternative security guarantees.

This remains the central issue. “Israel should abandon calls for the establishment of early warning posts in Syrian lands and accept equal and balanced security arrangements,” a Syrian official said Sunday.

Israeli officials have also denied reports or dodged questions about a joint U.S.-Israel mutual defense pact as a security alternative--an option that Israel has long resisted.

Pressed about whether the matter was discussed Monday, Clinton said that the United States has long had an “explicit policy commitment” to maintain Israel’s “qualitative and technological edge.”

At subsequent talks with Defense Secretary William J. Perry, however, Peres did raise the issue of various treaty possibilities--but without going into specifics, U.S. officials said.

The focus of Peres’ visit has been a regional peace. “He has emphasized that the quality of peace is the most important thing,” said an official involved in the Pentagon talks.

In a sign of the changing times, Israel pressed Perry to agree to provide F-16s to Jordan, which is seeking 16 to 18 of the sophisticated warplanes. U.S. officials called the Peres request “remarkable” in light of past Israeli attempts to block major arms sales to all Arab states.

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As part of the peace process, Clinton held out the prospect of a Peres-Assad meeting and of another presidential visit to the Middle East. “At some point I think the leaders of countries that are interested in peace have to meet . . . and together to work their problems out,” he said.

Christopher is now scheduled to leave Paris on Thursday after the signing of the Bosnia peace accord and attend talks Friday in Damascus, the Syrian capital, a State Department spokesman said. He will also visit Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the West Bank, part of which is in the midst of being transferred to Palestinian control.