Clinton to Meet With Syrian Leader in Geneva

In what could be the first crack in a 2 1/2-month freeze in talks between Syria and Israel, President Clinton and Syrian President Hafez Assad plan to meet Sunday in Switzerland to discuss how to revive the stalled U.S.-sponsored negotiations.

Clinton announced the surprise summit with the Syrian head of state at a news conference in Bangladesh, during the first leg of his six-day journey to South Asia. He said the meeting with Assad will take place on his way home.

The rare trip abroad by the deliberate and cautious 69-year-old Syrian leader could be portentous, coming amid hints in the Israeli media and by some Arab commentators that the two sides actually are closer to resuming talks than their harsh public rhetoric would suggest.

Although there have been repeated rumors about the supposedly failing health of Assad, who has ruled since 1971 and is the only surviving Arab leader to have attacked Israel, the proposed meeting would seem to indicate that he is still on top of the peace process and capable of making decisions.

Clinton speaks with Assad regularly by telephone and has met the Syrian leader three times, most recently a year ago at the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan. They also met twice in 1994, in Geneva and Damascus, the Syrian capital.

It was not immediately clear what inducements Clinton could use this time to jump-start the talks with Israel, since Syria has said it will not return to the table until Israel has agreed in principle to Syria’s “sovereign” demand for full restitution of its territory. Syria defines that as a pullback to the line that existed on June 4, 1967, the eve of that year’s Arab-Israeli war.

“We’ll just have to see what comes out of the talks,” said Clinton, speaking at a joint news conference in Dhaka with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheik Hasina Wajed.

Noting that Israeli-Palestinian talks already have been put back on course--they are scheduled to resume today--Clinton called giving a push to the Syrian-Israeli track “the next logical step.”

“I don’t want to unduly raise expectations, but I think that this is an appropriate thing for me to do, to try to get this back on track, so that our objectives of having a comprehensive peace can go forward,” he said.

U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, traveling with Clinton, said the president has been “in ongoing contact” with Assad and with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak since the last round of talks in Shepherdstown, W.Va., ended in January.

Meeting directly with Assad now makes sense for Clinton, said Berger, because Clinton has “had many direct, face-to-face conversations with Prime Minister Barak. And there are some things that are best discussed face to face, leader to leader.” The advisor said Clinton would not be carrying “a specific American proposal” but would present Assad “his impressions of how the process of negotiations can be resumed.”

For its part, Israel said it hoped the Geneva discussions would break the logjam and allow the negotiating teams to meet again. But a statement from Barak’s office warned: “Such talks will take place only if the appropriate conditions are created.”

Each side has accused the other of causing the impasse. Israel repeatedly has said it is ready to go back into talks with Syria. Syria has said it wants talks too. However, it said it must be sure that Israel is serious and is prepared to meet its demand for the return of territory before the Syrians can go back to discussing other topics of mutual concern, which include water-sharing, normalization of relations and security. A leaked negotiating document in January suggested that the two sides were close to agreement on most of these issues.

Clinton, who is believed to badly want to achieve peace in the Middle East before his term ends next year, managed to bring the two sides together in December after a four-year hiatus.

But after just two brief rounds, the negotiations broke off in January, with the Syrians expressing frustration at what they considered the unwillingness of the Israeli side to discuss the territorial issue. Syria said that for talks to resume, Israel now must agree to demarcate the border.

According to news accounts published in Israel, Barak recently revealed to his Cabinet that past Israeli leaders, including the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in fact had acceded years ago to Syria’s demand that Israel agree to pull back from all of the Golan Heights if other issues were settled. However, Barak stopped short of saying that he would be willing to do the same.

For the Syrians, the admission was significant because Barak’s predecessors had always denied that Israel ever conceded that it was willing to give back the Golan in full. However, Syria expressed disappointment that Barak made the admission only in a closed Cabinet meeting and not to the Israeli public.

Syria also has been concerned about Barak’s announced plan to pull Israeli troops unilaterally out of southern Lebanon by early July if a peace agreement is not reached with Syria and Lebanon by then.

Syria, which is the main power in Lebanon, has treated the Syrian and Lebanese peace accords as a set. It fears that if Israel disengages from southern Lebanon, where its troops have been suffering losses from Hezbollah guerrillas, it would feel less urgency about leaving the adjacent Golan.

The Syrians say they are willing to establish normal, peaceful--if not especially warm--relations with Israel after more than half a century of war, if Israel gives back all of the Golan it seized in 1967, chasing from their homes more than 100,000 Syrian Arabs who lived there. Syria argues that by making peace with its oldest and most implacable foe, Israel would gain peace with all other states in the Arab world.

The Israeli-Palestinian talks, to be held under extraordinary secrecy rules, will begin today at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. Veteran negotiator Oded Eran will lead the Israeli delegation, while the Palestinian Authority’s top bargainer, Yasser Abed-Rabbo, heads the Palestinian delegation.

U.S. envoy Dennis B. Ross will participate in the talks, but a U.S. official said the focus will be on face-to-face talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Both the Israeli and U.S. governments insist that simultaneous Israeli talks with the Palestinians and the Syrians are not only possible but desirable. However, most U.S. and Israeli officials say privately that selling two controversial peace pacts to the Israeli public at the same time might be beyond Barak’s political capability.

Daniszewski reported from Cairo and Chen from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.