3rd Round of Talks Between Israel, Syria Called Off

Landmark peace talks between Syria and Israel, scheduled to resume in the United States this week, were abruptly postponed Monday amid Syrian dissatisfaction over Israel’s refusal to commit itself to a full withdrawal from the strategic Golan Heights.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, in announcing the postponement, said it was an “indefinite” delay. Barak’s spokesman said the talks were called off at the urging of the Clinton administration because of differences between the two sides that could not be bridged “for now.”

Although Israeli and U.S. officials sought to downplay the crisis, it was a stinging setback to what had been widely hailed as a breakthrough in the pursuit of peace in the Middle East. The first encounter between Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh at the White House on Dec. 15 was the highest-level meeting ever between the two nations and raised expectations that half a century of conflict would finally be eased.

A weeklong session followed quickly and was wrapped up Jan. 10 with little tangible achievement but with a promise to continue Wednesday.

The Clinton administration, patron of the talks, reacted cautiously Monday. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Israel and Syria will send experts to Washington to discuss a working draft position paper prepared by the U.S.

“Presently, their approaches to the next round differ, and as a result, there is going to be a delay,” Albright said in a statement.

Barak had been scheduled to board a flight today for Washington. With the Syrian talks on hold, however, he rushed off late Monday to an unannounced meeting with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. The two discussed the troubled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which many Palestinians feel has been given short shrift in the excitement over Syria.

Israeli state radio reported that Barak asked Arafat for a two-month delay in the writing of a preliminary agreement that will serve as the basis for a comprehensive settlement. Barak had set a deadline of Feb. 13, which now seems impossible to achieve.

Barak met with Arafat, who leaves for Washington and a session with President Clinton later in the week, despite a terrorist attack earlier Monday. Suspected Palestinian extremists detonated a pipe bomb in the Israeli city of Hadera, injuring 26 people. The attack gave life to fears that extremists will use violence to attempt to derail the peace process.

The sudden decision to postpone the Israeli-Syrian talks was seen by Israeli commentators as a ploy by Syria’s hard-line president, Hafez Assad, albeit one with unforeseeable consequences. In Syria, however, the move was seen as a sign of Syria’s determination to resolve the Golan dispute and take it off the negotiating table.

Itamar Rabinovich, the president of Tel Aviv University and former head of Israel’s negotiating team with the Syrians in the early 1990s, said the tactic was typical of Assad--to delay, and provoke a crisis just when progress was being made.

“My sense is this is a temporary hitch and that the underlying will of both parties to stay the course is predominant,” Rabinovich said in an interview Monday night. “However, once you get into the business of [provoking] a crisis, it can get out of hand.”

Barak, speaking earlier in the day, seemed unfazed by the likelihood of a delay.

“If he [Assad] needs some time before the negotiations are to be resumed, we respect it,” Barak told reporters. “And we will wait. We will be there. When they will be ready, we will be ready. If they are not ready now, we are not ready either. We have a lot of work to do here, as you all know.”

Assad Seeks Guarantee of a Full Withdrawal

Syria’s principal demand is that the Jewish state withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, a fertile, mountainous plateau that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War. Assad wants Israel to guarantee in advance a full withdrawal to the June 4, 1967, border, along the Sea of Galilee, before further negotiations--something Israel refuses to do.

Assad, at a December meeting with Albright in Damascus, the Syrian capital, agreed to put aside this demand in order for the talks to begin, but he expected an Israeli commitment soon thereafter, according to a senior Israeli official familiar with the negotiations. Having not received it yet, Assad is now balking at the next round, this official said.

The Syrians, who have always been suspicious of Israeli intentions and rigid in their insistence that Israel give back all of the Golan in exchange for peace, apparently decided that getting that point cleared up was vital to going forward.

On Sunday night, SANA, the state news agency, reported that Foreign Minister Shareh had cast doubt on the talks’ resumption during a phone conversation with Albright.

According to SANA, Shareh wanted to know beforehand what “assessments and conclusions” would be reached when the talks resumed.

On Monday, Syria’s state-run Radio Damascus said that, without an explicit Israeli commitment to withdraw to the 1967 line, the next round of talks would be “useless.” Other issues to be debated include the normalization of diplomatic relations, security and demilitarization arrangements, and water rights. Israel says it wants to discuss all issues simultaneously, although it is known to place emphasis on security arrangements, including the right to place early-warning posts on the Golan’s towering Mt. Hermon.

“An Israeli refusal on this issue [of the border] will prevent any progress being achieved by any of the other working groups, and so a third round of talks would be useless,” Radio Damascus said.

Barak has hinted at a willingness to relinquish at least part of the territory, which is home to about 17,000 Jewish settlers and a similar number of Druze, who are adherents of an offshoot of Islam. But Israel prefers a 1923 borderline that would leave it access to vital water sources. Moreover, Barak faces mounting opposition to losing the Golan from settlers and a large cross-section of the Israeli public and is under pressure to avoid appearing as though he is too eager to make concessions to Assad.

“If the Syrians think they can make peace by obtaining from Israel a commitment to leave the Golan, they are mistaken,” Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy said. “The border must be fixed by negotiation, and if Assad wants peace, he must conduct the negotiations without resorting to threats.”

The Syrian decision to hold out for an Israeli commitment to the June 4, 1967, border comes after Damascus was displeased by the publication in an Israeli newspaper of the U.S.-drafted “working paper” that essentially outlined the Israeli and Syrian initial negotiating positions in talks that were supposed to be kept secret.

Because the working document made clear that the border issue had not yet been resolved, Syria’s refusal to resume talks now may be in part a face-saving device designed to underline that Syria has not softened its stance and will not accept anything less than getting all the conquered territory back.

The document also indicated that Syria was willing to make other concessions, including the exchange of diplomatic missions and the opening of borders between the two countries. Like Barak, Assad cannot appear to be making too many concessions, and publication of the document may have forced the Syrian president to adopt a tougher stance.

“I don’t think he wants to cause the collapse of the peace process,” said Eyal Zisser, a historian at Tel Aviv University’s Dayan Center who specializes in Syria. “But we may be doomed to wait [for the talks to resume] for days or months.”

U.S. Requests Experts Come for a Review

With both Israel and Syria unwilling to budge, the Clinton administration said it thought it was a waste of time to proceed with the talks Wednesday. Instead, it has requested that a small group of negotiators--perhaps as few as two from each country--come to Washington in the next several days to review the working outline for the talks. The hope of American officials is that, by forcing the emissaries to focus on a text, it will be possible to single out the larger and more difficult issues.

The two sides are “increasingly focused on having their most important needs resolved first,” said a senior administration official.

Wilkinson reported from Jerusalem and Daniszewski from Cairo. Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin in Washington also contributed to this report.