Syria makes concessions in talks but Assad resists pressure to meet Peres

AS THE US Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, begins his 17th shuttle mission between Syria and Israel today, Damascus remains as fixated as ever on its longstanding demand for Israel's "full withdrawal" from the Golan, occupied in 1967.

The Syrians, however, no longer insist that Israel must commit itself formally to withdrawal before entering into negotiations on other issues, and the two sides reportedly made progress on "12 out of 18" items on their agenda, including the content of normalisation and the sharing of water resources, during two sessions at the Wye plantation outside Washington, preparing for Mr Christopher's visit.

The two areas where a wide gap still remains are security arrangements for the Golan, once Israel has withdrawn its troops, and the delineation of the border. On the first, Syria demands a "total" Israeli pull back from the Golan, "balanced and equal" security arrangements and "symmetry" of troop deployments on both sides of the line. On the second, Damascus wants Israel to withdraw to the line of June 4th, 1967. This line gave Syria a strip of territory along the shore of Lake Tiberias and control of the flow of water into the lake which feeds the Jordan River.

Although Israel has indicated it may be prepared to drop its insistence on ground based early warning stations in the Golan, it has, so far, rejected Syrian demands for balanced demilitarised zones and symmetrical troop deployment. And Israel favours a return to the old international border drawn up after the first World War which would give Israel the strategic lake front strip and its water resources.

However, the pre election fever that has suddenly gripped Israel nearly destroyed progress achieved at Wye. During the talks the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, in an attempt to appeal to the right wing of the Labour party, said flatly that Israel would insist on controlling the Golan's water resources and installing ground based early warning stations. The Syrian official daily, at Thawra, responded by accusing Israel of impossible and provocative demands Israeli politicians in the camp of the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, stepped up their campaign for a "high level" meeting between Mr Peres and President Hafez al Assad of Syria in an effort to achieve a public relations coup comparable to the dramatic visit to Jerusalem of President Sadat of Egypt in 1977.

Although such a summit might win Mr Peres the election and thereby promote the peace process according to an authoritative source "Assad will never, ever meet an Israeli prime minister".

The source added that last week's hard line statements by Mr Barak had made it all the more difficult for a meeting to be arranged between him and the Syrian Foreign Minister, Mr Farouk al Sharaa, an event which also would give Labour an electoral boost.