It’s Make or Break for Middle East Peace

CAIRO — For decades, the goal of forging a comprehensive Middle East peace has been the diplomatic Holy Grail for U.S. leaders. Now, with his second term ebbing fast, President Clinton has what may be his last best chance to bring about peace between Israel and its chief remaining Arab adversary.

Clinton’s scheduled meeting Sunday with Syrian President Hafez Assad is the result of months of mostly secret diplomacy, and their session in a luxury hotel room in Geneva could eventually yield a result of momentous proportions. Alternatively, it might also mark one of the greatest lost opportunities in Middle East peace efforts.

The meeting, which is regarded as crucial in the region, will determine whether there is enough common ground for the Israeli-Syrian talks to resume.

If Clinton announces that talks are to resume, it will indicate that Israel and Syria, with U.S. help, have somehow bridged the basic dispute that has snagged the talks until now: Assad’s insistence that Israel commit to returning all of the land it conquered from Syria in 1967 and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s reluctance to give such an assurance.

If Clinton cannot soon announce a resumption in negotiations, it will suggest that a peace accord most likely won’t be reached until after the Clinton presidency and perhaps until after the death of Assad, who is 69 years old and reportedly in poor health.

The Clinton administration is downplaying the chances that Sunday’s talks will produce an immediate announcement. “We won’t know the impact of the meeting for a few weeks,” said a senior administration official.

Some Arab and Israeli sources, however, are more optimistic. They believe that Barak will confirm through Clinton that Israel is ready to come all the way down from the Golan Heights and that the negotiations therefore will be resumed, possibly within days.

If those talks hit no potholes, these sources believe, a final peace deal between Israel and Syria could be concluded by year’s end. For the first time since its declaration of statehood in 1948, Israel would be formally accepted by all of its immediate neighbors and its borders would be assured not just by military arms but by diplomatic treaties.

Assad, the last surviving Arab leader to have launched an attack against Israel and the fiercest opponent of earlier peace agreements struck by Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians, would agree to see Israel’s flag flying from an embassy in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

“I doubt that the two of them would go to Geneva and meet if they were not fairly convinced that something good was going to come out of it,” said Syrian-born analyst Murhaf Jouejati, a resident scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “If they met and nothing happened, it would be a disaster for the peace process, and I think it is very likely that they will not let that happen.”

What makes this moment most propitious is that each of the principals involved--Clinton, Assad and Barak--faces strong pressure to reach an agreement now.

For Clinton’s scandal-marred presidency, a Middle East accord would be remembered as the crowning achievement.

For Assad, there is the need to achieve an agreement during his lifetime to help ensure a smooth ascent to power for his heir apparent, 35-year-old son Bashar. The younger Assad is an untested politician who is likely to face challenges from groups within Syria that do not want his father’s 30-year strong-arm rule to be extended into another generation.

Barak is facing a self-imposed deadline to remove all Israeli troops from southern Lebanon in early July--a pullback that few expect to go smoothly unless it is part of an agreement with Syria, which dominates Lebanon.

In addition, many people believe that Assad’s internal political position is strong enough to permit him to make peace with Israel. Under this analysis, if Israel gambles on waiting for Bashar Assad or someone else to assume command in Syria, that leader might be too weak to make a deal.

There is a consensus in the Middle East that both Israel and Syria want an agreement and that this is the most likely moment. But whether those factors will lead to an accord is far from assured.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was cautious this week in her assessment. “I have given up predictions as far as the Middle East is concerned,” Albright told reporters in Geneva.

Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor, this week said the “best-case” scenario would be that the two sides show themselves to be “close enough that, if we actually started negotiations, that you could envision them ending in success.”

Negotiations broke down in January after Syria accused Israel of refusing to discuss the issue that has always been its paramount concern: whether Israel is ready to withdraw from all of the territory in the Golan Heights it seized during the 1967 Middle East War.

Absent such an agreement, Syria has been saying for years that it would not sign a treaty. Syria also maintains that Israel made a conditional agreement to pull back to the prewar line as long ago as 1993, when then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was negotiating with Assad through U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher. The Syrians are hoping that Barak will fulfill such an agreement.

But Israel is known to want certain small adjustments made to the frontier that existed before fighting began June 4, 1967, and that was a military line and not a recognized international border. Israel’s main concern has been that Syria not be allowed access to the Sea of Galilee, the Jewish state’s main water source. Before the 1967 war, Syrians were on the northeastern shore.

If there is a compromise, British journalist Patrick Seale wrote this week, it would likely be one that returned to Syria all of the territory Israel captured from the nation in 1967. But the Assad regime would have to give Israel certain assurances about the Sea of Galilee: that Syria would not use or contaminate its waters and that Israelis would be allowed access to the entire shoreline. Seale, author of “Assad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East,” is considered well informed about the Syrian regime’s thinking.

A negotiating document leaked after the last round of talks suggested that the two countries were far along toward agreeing on a final accord. But other issues still had not been finalized, particularly measures meant to assure Israel that it would be safe from sudden attack. Israel wants to be allowed to keep military observers in a Golan Heights post after its withdrawal and to negotiate limits on how close to the border Syria may deploy military forces.

The decisions awaiting the two sides are significant. As Mohammed Bassiouny, Egypt’s longtime ambassador to Israel, was quoted as telling the pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat on Tuesday, the coming weeks will be “the most important in the modern history of the Middle East. They will decide the future of war or peace in the region.”

Staff writer Edwin Chen of The Times’ Washington Bureau contributed to this report.