Although Sunday’s meeting between President Clinton and Syrian President Hafez Assad is being hailed by the U.S. administration as a positive move toward Middle East peace, others here are saying it is too soon to tell.
“I don’t think there’s a lot to go on from what was said publicly the other day,” said Richard Haass, a top Middle East adviser in the Bush administration who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
At a news conference following Sunday’s meeting in Geneva, Assad spoke of the possibility of “a new era of security and stability in which normal peaceable relations among all shall dawn on the region.”
Assad’s use of the word “normal” was trumpeted by Clinton administration officials and others as representing a step forward in the peace process.
After Assad’s remarks, Clinton said that the Syrian leader sought “not just an end to war, but the establishment of real and comprehensive peace with Israel that will ensure normal, peaceful relations among good neighbors.”
“The key out of Geneva was that Assad succeeded in having President Clinton act as his interpreter, of his interpretation of peace,” said Robert Satloff, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Clinton also said at Sunday’s news conference that he hoped the Assad statement would “provoke a positive response in Israel.”
“The fact that he called on Israel to respond to Assad’s statement may contradict the non-interfering role the Americans have adopted,” Satloff said.
Satloff pointed out that the success of the Israeli-Palestinian discussions in Norway leading to last September’s landmark autonomy agreement was in part due to American restraint from active involvement.
For his part, Haass said that Assad’s words were a possible “indication that Syria may be willing to entertain” a concept of peace reaching beyond non- belligerency.
But he said that if Syria really wanted to send clear signals regarding the peace process, it was more likely to do so “in private and in return for something.”
Satloff said that he hoped the administration had received private assurances from Syria that went beyond Assad’s public statements, because otherwise, the public statements do not merit the level of success attributed to the meeting.
“It’s the quintessential brilliance of the Syrian president,” Satloff said. “He succeeded in making American diplomacy stand on its head for using a single adjective.”
For months now, negotiations between Israel and Syria have been stalemated over definitions of peace and withdrawal.
Israel wants Syria to define what type of peace it envisions between the two countries. The Israeli government wants normal relations with Syria, including tourism and trade, not just a state of non-belligerency.
The Syrians, meanwhile, want Israel to commit to total withdrawal from the Golan heights.
Some say the Syrian leader’s record – including support for terrorism and drug trafficking – requires a cautious attitude about Assad’s future plans.
“I’m skeptical,” Daniel Pipes, a Philadelphia-based expert on Syria, said of Assad’s comments Sunday. “Maybe it is for real, and if so, it is important, but we don’t know.”
Assad has been giving only a little at a time, in contrast to the late Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, who traveled to Jerusalem in order to further prospects for peace with Israel, Pipes said.
Pipes also pointed out that Assad “kept Israeli journalists out of the room” at the news conference Sunday. “There was no grand gesture,” he said. “He is giving the minimum.”
The State Department itself said Tuesday that Syria’s attempt to exclude Israeli journalists showed it had a “long ways to go” before it achieved normal relations with Israel.
Department spokesman Mike McCurry also said that U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher had raised the matter with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al- Sharaa, making it clear that “we could not tolerate a situation in which anyone would be discriminated against.”
One member of Congress who is a leader on issues of Jewish concern also expressed caution about the significance of Assad’s remarks in a statement released Sunday.
“While it is heartening to hear Assad say publicly he wants peace with Israel, until he lays out the details, whatever Assad has said today has to be listened to with skepticism,” said Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
“For years we’ve heard Assad make promises to the world in order to get what he wants and then turn around and go off on his own,” Schumer continued.
Another issue raised by some observers has to do with whether Israel is able to engage in simultaneous land-for-peace negotiations with both the Palestinians and Syria at the same time.
Israel is currently involved in difficult negotiations with the Palestinians to implement the declaration of principles on autonomy that both parties signed last September.
Haass said that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s pattern in recent months has been to put one negotiating track, either the Syrians or the Palestinians, at the top of his agenda.
In recent months, the Palestinians have taken center stage. But, Haass said, if Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat “proves too frustrating an interlocutor, he may decide it’s time to push Syria” to the front burner.
Israel and Syria, as well as Lebanon and Jordan, are expected to return to Washington on Jan. 24 for a new set of talks involving only the heads of the various delegations.
Most analysts said the Clinton-Assad meeting was unlikely to cause fundamental changes in the new round of talks.
“The meeting had importance as a symbol. It boosts Assad’s stature, but it does not change fundamental positions,” Pipes said.
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