Assad’s Death a Prod as Mideast Talks Begin in U.S.

WASHINGTON — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, joined by Clinton administration mediators, resume their plodding peace talks at two Washington-area air bases today, with the funeral of Syrian President Hafez Assad providing a new sense of urgency.

For months, President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak have tried to play the Palestinians and the Syrians against each other, suggesting that Israel could make peace this year with one or the other but probably not both.

But with Syria now facing a political transition, the Palestinians have become the only game in town. Clinton, who wants to secure a peace agreement to bolster his legacy, and Barak, whose coalition government is faltering, have nowhere else to turn.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, who visits Washington this week for talks with Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, can expect to feel the full weight of his new status as the only Arab leader with a chance of making peace. Middle East experts believe that Clinton and his aides will warn Arafat that time is running out if he hopes to achieve his lifelong ambition of presiding over an independent Palestinian state.

Arafat’s visit is technically separate from the resumed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Andrews and Bolling Air Force bases, but it will allow the Palestinian leader to give new instructions to his delegates after his meeting with Clinton on Thursday.

“Arafat will be bombarded on all sides by the same story: ‘You have to reach an agreement. You will get lots of support if you do, but you may miss out if you delay,’ ” said Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East expert on the National Security Council during the Reagan administration.

Kemp, now a senior fellow at the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom in Washington, said Clinton can be expected to warn Arafat that as U.S. leader he “can go as far as any president in American history” toward accommodating Palestinian concerns but that “there is no guarantee that either [Vice President Al] Gore or [Texas Gov. George W.] Bush will be able to do as much.”

The death of Assad, who had been tantalizingly close to a deal before he died, can be expected to dramatize for Arafat, whose own health is reportedly fragile, that there is nothing to be gained through procrastination.

Albright left Monday to lead the U.S. delegation to Assad’s funeral. The secretary of State plans to keep short her stay in Damascus, the Syrian capital, returning to Washington in time to meet Arafat on Wednesday at her home in the Georgetown neighborhood.

“The United States believes that a historic opportunity exists to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Albright said before leaving for Damascus. “The issues are difficult and complex, and will take time to resolve. But both Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat understand that this opportunity must not be allowed to slip away. Both are committed to moving ahead step by step and to reaching an agreement as rapidly as possible.”

Nine months ago, Barak and Arafat agreed to wrap up negotiations on a permanent peace by Sept. 13, a deadline that seemed ambitious at the time and now seems almost unattainable. Arafat has said he will issue a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood if no deal is in sight by September. But as a practical matter, there can be no Palestinian state without at least tacit Israeli approval.

“If Arafat announces a state, it will be a state without frontiers,” said Richard Murphy, assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs in the Reagan administration and now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.