Israelis, Syrians Plan Weekend Contacts : Mideast: Officials offer signs of hope as informal meetings continue after first round of U.S. negotiations ends.

Israeli and Syrian negotiators ended their first round of talks Friday at a secluded plantation on the Maryland shore, then raised expectations by deciding to keep talking in the Washington area over the New Year’s weekend.

The decision to maintain contact this weekend was powered by the thinking on both sides that the first round was “useful and conducive to further discussions,” said State Department spokesman John Dinger.

Dinger added, however, that the two sides intend no more than “informal contacts” over the weekend in preparation for a second round of three-day talks at the Wye Plantation beginning Wednesday. The suggestion that the delegates remain in the Washington area for continued consultations came from Dennis Ross, the State Department official who is serving as mediator for the talks.

But the spokesman would not say whether the State Department thinks the two sides are making progress toward a peace agreement.

Although almost no information has been leaked by the two sides, the talks are being watched closely by many outsiders, because they may serve to unsnarl the last major obstacle to peace between the Arabs and the Israelis in the Middle East.

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In some ways, the quest for an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement should seem easy.

All outsiders know that a peace agreement depends on the Israelis giving up the Golan Heights seized from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Syrians accepting the existence of Israel and pledging peace.

But Syrian President Hafez Assad has regarded himself as an implacable foe of Israel for years, and many Israelis still remember the days when Syrian troops rained bombs and shells on Israeli farms and kibbutzim from the Golan Heights.

Some hopeful signals from the negotiations were detected by Israeli newspapers. The newspaper Maariv, for example, reported that Syrian negotiators were discussing the possibility of allowing Israel access to water in the Sea of Galilee even after Israeli troops withdraw from the Golan Heights. The sea is now controlled by Israel but would lie between Israel and Syria if the Syrians reoccupied the Golan Heights.

In addition, Maariv said the Syrians are discussing the possibility of joint Israeli-Syrian projects such as vineyards on the Golan Heights and tourism along the Sea of Galilee. All these ideas were cited by Israeli sources as examples of a newfound Syrian flexibility.

If negotiations follow the original schedule, the second round of talks at the Wye Plantation next week will be followed a week later by another trip to Damascus, the Syrian capital, and Jerusalem by Secretary of State Warren Christopher. He has said he is ready to shuttle between the two capitals if that will bring them closer to an agreement. Christopher’s visit to the Middle East in early December set the stage for the current rounds of negotiations.

The three Syrian negotiators at the talks are Walid Moualem, the ambassador to Washington; Mikhail Wehbe, director of the foreign minister’s office, and Riad Daoudi, a legal advisor in the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Israeli negotiators are Uri Savir, director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Itamar Rabinovich, the ambassador to Washington, and Joel Singer, the Israeli ministry’s legal advisor.

The State Department said the news blackout on the talks would continue through the weekend of informal contacts and through the more formal talks at the plantation next week.