Clinton Urges Syria’s Assad to Resume Talks With Israel

President Clinton talked by telephone with Syrian President Hafez Assad for almost an hour Tuesday in a determined effort to persuade Syria to resume interrupted Middle East peace talks.

Clinton’s call came as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright predicted that Israel and Syria eventually will overcome half a century of animosity and sign a formal peace treaty, despite Monday’s indefinite postponement of high-level negotiations that had been scheduled to resume today.

Albright and nongovernmental Middle East experts said that Assad, who played a role in delaying the talks, almost certainly wanted to gain procedural advantage, not torpedo the peace process, which seems closer to success than at any time since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948.

“The logic of peace has become compelling” for both Syria and Israel, Albright said. “Their leaders will have to take hard, fateful, even painful decisions, but they have increasingly come to understand that there is no better alternative.”

Albright said the latest snag came over the same procedural issue that twice stalled the two countries’ talks earlier this month in Shepherdstown, W. Va.: the order in which the key issues will be discussed and resolved.

Syria wants to talk first about the return of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau it lost to Israel in the 1967 Middle East War. Israel wants to discuss the other issues--security guarantees, water rights and the nature of future diplomatic relations between the governments--before considering withdrawal from the Golan.

Twice in the earlier round of talks, U.S. officials believed they had brokered a compromise in the dispute, only to see the issue reemerge.

“Understandably, both want to be sure their needs will be addressed first,” Albright said. “Our challenge is to work with both sides and find ways to narrow their differences to the point where all needs get resolved simultaneously.”

Other Middle East experts generally agreed.

“It was a predictable bump in the road,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a Reagan administration Mideast specialist. “It was always anticipated that the early issues, particularly procedural issues, would be very sensitive because . . . of the inherent suspicions on both sides.”

In Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s government tried to show that it can turn to the Palestinians whenever dealings with the Syrians go sour, in effect playing one negotiating partner against the other.

As soon as the Israeli-Syrian talks were called off, Barak held a surprise, four-hour meeting that stretched into early Tuesday with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Israeli and Palestinian officials said the two leaders agreed to “accelerate” their efforts to reach a preliminary draft of a final, comprehensive peace settlement by mid-February.

Arafat is scheduled to confer with Clinton on Thursday at the White House. Initially, U.S. officials had expected that meeting would include Barak, who would have broken away from meetings with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh to attend. With the Syrian talks off, Barak scrubbed his trip to Washington.

Arafat advisor Nabil abu Rudaineh said the Palestinian leader will use the meeting to ask the Clinton administration to prod Israel into more serious negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Last week’s leak to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz of the contents of a U.S.-drafted summary of points of agreement and disagreement might have led to Assad’s part in delaying the talks.

Richard W. Murphy, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and former assistant secretary of State, said the leak “confirmed the Syrian view that you cannot trust an Israeli.” He said the leak fed Assad’s appetite for conspiracy theories.

Since sweeping into office last summer on a pledge to end decades of Arab-Israeli conflict, Barak has tried to manage two tracks of negotiations--with the Syrians and with the Palestinians--at a fast pace that many have seen as unrealistic. His insistence that he could achieve his goals and make peace on a rigid schedule has been the hallmark of his tenacious governing style.

Now, with the Syrian talks on hold and the Palestinian effort sluggish at best, Barak is suddenly confronted with the complexities of what he is trying to achieve, Israeli analysts said Tuesday.

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.