Clinton-Assad Meeting Ends on Low Note

President Clinton failed to break a negotiating deadlock Sunday between Israel and Syria despite a rare face-to-face meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Geneva that stretched over three hours.

“The differences [between Israel and Syria] are significant and important, and obviously more work needs to be done in order to bridge them,” a somber White House spokesman told reporters after the president flew home late Sunday.

“It is impossible to predict when those talks might resume,” Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said.

The outcome was a clear setback for all parties. With Clinton leaving office in January and Assad in failing health, the Middle East peace process could be delayed several months. And Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak--who came to power last year in part on a promise to negotiate peace with Israel’s foes--had hoped to conclude agreements with all parties over the next six months.

The key sticking point in the Israeli-Syrian diplomacy, which has been an ongoing source of contention, is the status of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized during the 1967 Middle East War and which Syria wants back in its entirety. Negotiations broke down in January after Syria accused Israel of refusing to discuss the issue. Israel has insisted on security guarantees that might require its presence in the Golan, along with secured water rights to the Sea of Galilee.

Having maintained regular contact with Assad and Barak, Clinton entered the meeting here believing that the peace talks could resume “in a serious fashion,” in the words of National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger.

So the president extended his trip to South Asia in order to meet here with Assad.

Now it appears that Clinton underestimated the chasm separating the two sides.

Israel’s initial reaction was measured. “From Israel’s point of view, the door is not closed,” said Gadi Baltiansky, the prime minister’s spokesman. “If there will be the right conditions to resume the talks with the Syrians, we will do it--bona fide,” Baltiansky said in a telephone interview after Lockhart’s announcement.

A senior Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem added: “The window of opportunity [for peacemaking] that the Clinton presidency provides us with is closing. But we expected that Assad might want to go back to Damascus and consult on what he’s hearing, and even sleep on it for a week or two. Then we will know whether things will resume.”

Israeli commentators, however, were unanimous in interpreting the failure of the summit as a major blow to Barak and his hopes of accomplishing three major goals within the next six months: an Israeli troop withdrawal from Lebanon by July, a peace agreement with Syria, and a peace deal with the Palestinians by September.

“One must explore the possibility that this is the end of Barak’s strategy,” Israeli TV commentator Ehud Yaari said Sunday.

Clinton and Assad met for 2 1/2 hours, took a two-hour break and then met again for 30 minutes. But there was no narrowing of the differences, aides reported.

Despite the setback, Lockhart said, Clinton intends to “continue to try to help the parties overcome these differences,” including discussing the peace process Tuesday in Washington with visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Meanwhile, special U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis B. Ross is to travel to Israel today to brief Barak on the Clinton-Assad meeting.

Clinton administration officials declined to detail the issues blocking a resumption of talks. “The two presidents had a wide-ranging discussion where all of the issues were on the table,” Lockhart said.

Many participants and observers had viewed the Clinton-Assad session as occurring at a point when time for a peace settlement might be running out.

And the leaders’ failure here to make progress raised the possibility that a peace accord now may have to be postponed until after the Clinton presidency and perhaps even until after the death of Assad, who at 69 is believed to be in failing health.

An added sense of urgency is Israel’s intention to withdraw troops from Lebanon by July. As one senior Clinton advisor put it over the weekend: “I think there is an opportunity over the next month or so to resume negotiations if both parties want to . . . [but] once Israel withdraws from Lebanon . . . the dynamic is likely to change.”

Israel has occupied a 9-mile-deep swath of southern Lebanon for two decades, saying it is necessary in order to protect northern Israeli communities from cross-border attacks. But Hezbollah guerrillas based in Lebanon have waged a determined struggle to oust the Israelis, launching attacks that have left a mounting Israeli toll, and the Israeli public has increasingly put pressure on politicians to bring the troops home.

Earlier in the day, Barak characterized the Geneva meeting as a vital chance for peace between Israel and Syria. “I believe that this event will unveil the mask from all players, and we will know, once and for all, from the highest possible kind of level of leadership, whether we have an opportunity to make a peace with Syria that is going to be seized by both leaders or not,” Barak said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Lockhart insisted that Clinton did not return home disappointed. “This process is difficult. It involves tough issues,” he said. “So I don’t think the president leaves here anything but glad that, at the end of this trip, he was able to have this face-to-face meeting with President Assad.”

Earlier negotiations between Israel and Syria broke down after Syria accused Israel of refusing to discuss the issue that has always been Damascus’ paramount concern: whether Israel is ready to withdraw from all of the territory in the Golan Heights seized during the 1967 war.

Syria insists that the Jewish state commit itself to returning all land captured from Syria more than three decades ago. Israel has insisted on specific security guarantees before it will make such a commitment.

Absent such a commitment, Syria insists that it is unwilling to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

Syria also believes that Israel made a conditional agreement to pull back to the prewar line as far back as 1994, when then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was negotiating with Assad through then-U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

Barak has said he will honor commitments made by his predecessors during Israeli-Syrian peace talks and has told the Israeli public that it must be prepared to “pay a heavy price for peace”--words that are interpreted by most analysts, and most Israelis, as indicating that he is willing to give up all, or almost all, of the Golan.

But Israel has made it known that it wants certain adjustments to the border that existed before fighting began June 4, 1967. The border was a military line and never a recognized international frontier. Israel’s main concern has been that Syria not be allowed access to the waters of the Sea of Galilee, which is Israel’s main water source. Before the 1967 war, Syrians were on the northeastern shore of the lake.

A document leaked after the last round of talks suggested that the two countries were far along toward a final accord. But some issues remained. Israel wants to be allowed to keep military observers on the Golan Heights’ Mt. Hermon after its withdrawal and to negotiate certain limits on how close to the border Syria may deploy various military forces.

Times staff writer Richard A. Serrano in Washington contributed to this report.