Barak: Clinton pushing for Syrian accord by May

JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Ehud Barak acknowledged that U.S. President Bill Clinton is pressing for Israel to complete a peace agreement with Syria within the next two months.

But a senior minister said U.S. officials have warned Israel against signing a peace treaty with Syria given the current instability in Damascus.

In what ministers said appeared to be an argument for full withdrawal from the Golan, Barak told his Cabinet that Clinton wants a peace agreement by May. The prime minister said Clinton believes that after that month he will be preoccupied with the presidential and congressional elections. He predicted an Islamic wave of violence should efforts fail to reach a peace accord with Syria.

The prime minister spent two hours briefing his ministers in the first formal discussion on Syria and Lebanon. At the session, Barak expressed doubt over the chances of a peace accord with Syria, citing the health of President Hafez Assad as well as his minority Alawite status in Sunni Syria. Barak said Assad is being more tough in negotiations than Egypt had been in 1978 because the president wants to please the Sunni majority in his country and in the Arab world.

The prime minister listed his priorities in a peace agreement with Syria. These include early-warning, security arrangements, including demilitarization that is asymmetrical in favor of the much smaller Jewish state, normalization and water rights.

"There's no doubt that everyone is talking about a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights," Housing Minister Yitzhak Levy said.

Regional Cooperation Minister Shimon Peres said the dispute with Syria appears to focus on Damascus's demand for the Sea of Galilee. Peres said in a meeting with a European envoy on Monday that agreeing to withdrawal to the Sea of Galilee would turn Israel's reservoir into an international waterway.

In Damascus, the Syrian Al Baath daily on Monday said this was the first time that Barak has formally recognized Rabin's commitment to full withdrawal from the Golan Heights. But the daily said Barak continues to pursue a contradictory policy.

At the session, Interior Minister Natan Sharansky, a leading figure in the previous government of Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, said U.S. State Department, Pentagon, military and CIA officials have warned against an Israeli peace treaty with a weak Assad. U.S. officials, he said, had expressed concern over the instability of the Assad regime and the prospects of a succession by the president's son, Bashar.

During the six-hour session, Education Minister Yossi Sarid warned against a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. Sarid told the ministers that such a pullback would guarantee Hizbullah attacks on Israel and another Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

But Industry and Trade Minister Ran Cohen called for an immediate pullback from Lebanon.

Israel television said the government has transferred $87 million to the army to prepare for a withdrawal from Lebanon. The army has been building fortifications in northern Israel designed to protect residents from Hizbullah attacks.

On Monday, Barak's office denied a report in that day's Israeli Haaretz daily that the United States was preparing to renew talks between Israel and Syria. The office said there was no breakthrough in efforts to revive negotiations.

The newspaper said Clinton relayed an Israeli proposal for Barak to discuss delineating the 1967 border with Syria in exchange for a ceasefire in Lebanon. Haaretz said Assad rejected the proposal.

But Justice Minister Yossi Beilin said on Monday that the United States is trying to bridge what he termed a gap that is not wide between Israel and Syria.

"The contacts are continuing and they are intensive," Israeli deputy Foreign Minister Nawaf Masalha said. "I think that next month the negotiation will resume between Israel and Syria."

But Foreign Minister David Levy later denied that negotiations with Syria would be renewed within the next few weeks. He said Israel would not agree to withdraw to the 1967 border.

"They [the Syrians] will not sit on the shores of the Sea of Galilee," Levy said. "And we will not share water."