Peace summit failure sparks new Mideast anxiety

By Paul Taylor

GENEVA (Reuters): A shudder of anxiety swept the Middle East on Monday at the failure of U.S. President Bill Clinton to break the deadlock in Israeli-Syrian peace talks.

For the third time in nearly a decade since the ice-breaking 1991 Madrid Middle East peace conference, both sides appear to have stepped back from the brink of peace.

Israel and Syria traded blame over the meager outcome of Clinton's first summit since 1994 with Syrian President Hafez al- Assad, which some analysts fear could prompt another flare-up in south Lebanon, the two arch-enemies' proxy battlefield.

"I am very concerned," said a senior diplomat in the region. "It looks bad."

"This could well be the first step towards a confrontation between Israel and Syria in Lebanon," Assad's British biographer, Patrick Seale, told Reuters.

However, not all were so gloomy.

Nabil Abdel-Fattah, assistant director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said the setback was likely to prove temporary, given internal pressures within Syria and Israel to reach a peace settlement.

He said Syria needed to regain the Golan Heights and redefine its role in Lebanon and the Arab world following an overall Middle East peace settlement to clear the decks for Assad's successor.

Barak had to make a deal with Syria to fulfill his promises of peace and secure his reputation within Israel.

Abdel-Fattah said the downbeat U.S. assessment of the Geneva summit should not be taken at face value.

"The Americans have learned their lesson from other Middle East negotiations -- as soon as you express optimism, something goes wrong," he said. "Now they are more cautious."

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said the summit had not narrowed "significant differences" between the two sides and it would not be productive to resume peace talks at this point. But he vowed Washington would not give up trying to bridge the gap.

Syria stuck to its insistence that Israel must commit itself to withdraw fully from the occupied Golan Heights to the cease- fire line before the 1967 Middle East war, and it uttered a veiled threat that there would be no peace or stability if Israel tried to withdraw unilaterally from Lebanon.

The fact that the frail, 69-year-old Assad had made a rare trip abroad had raised hopes of a breakthrough.

The combined pressures of his own mortality, the waning of Clinton's presidency and a July deadline for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon were bearing down on him.

"What we can conclude is that this summit was intended to put pressure on Assad as a final test of his resolve," said Seale, who has met Syrian and Israeli leaders several times in the last few months.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara told the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir that Clinton had brought nothing new from Israel "but rather he came asking Syria to help Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak get out of his difficult position".

Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy said Syria had made no concessions out of a misguided belief that internal Israeli disputes had weakened the government to a point where it would accept any condition.

Barak faces trouble in his own coalition and opinion polls show mounting public opposition to handing back the strategic Golan, suggesting he may have a hard task convincing voters to accept any deal in a referendum.

"The fact that Barak is rather weaker now at home complicates the situation. I think he is still playing chicken and hoping Assad will crack," Seale said.

Not only did the veteran Syrian ruler stick to his guns, but a Syrian statement after the summit did not address any of Israel's concerns about security, water rights and normalization of relations, and contained a clear warning on Lebanon.

"Stress was also put on the unity of the Syrian and Lebanese tracks and finding a just solution to the Arab Palestinian cause to achieve a comprehensive peace and to stabilize the situation," it said.

That was a clear reminder that Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon, would not tolerate Israel leaving south Lebanon and staying on the Golan, and would do whatever was necessary to sabotage such an attempt, Seale said.

Israel and the United States believe Damascus gives the green light for Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas to attack Israeli targets to pressure the Jewish state in the peace talks.

Diplomats said the main stumbling blocks remained the exact border around the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee and Israel's need for public gestures of reconciliation in advance of a completed peace deal.

They said that, before the summit, the United States had put to both sides the idea that, if Syria renounced rights to water from the Sea of Galilee, Israel's biggest water source, and agreed to put its first border post well back from the lake, the border should run along the shore.

Israeli and Syrian civilians would both have free access to the shore and the road around the lake.

But the sources said Israel insisted the border should be drawn several hundred metres (yards) back from the lake and Israel should have sovereignty and control over the road.

Despite the lack of progress in Geneva, officials on all sides stressed it was still not too late for a deal.

The fact that Clinton sent Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, rather than Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, to follow up the summit with Barak, may have been an attempt to avoid another high-level disappointment rather than an indication that the chance for peace had passed.

But senior Barak aide Danny Yatom said: "No doubt, after the two presidents Assad and Clinton met, additional attempts at more junior levels to bridge gaps will find it far more difficult to achieve success."