January 15, 1996
Web posted at: 11:46 p.m. EST (0446 GMT)
From State Department Correspondent Steve Hurst
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Israel and Syria are closer than they have ever been to reaching a comprehensive peace agreement, but U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher is concerned that Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres might call early elections that could scuttle the peace process.
A senior administration official told CNN that Christopher briefed Syrian President Hafez Assad about those concerns when the two men met in Damascus last Friday.
"It might be the case that everything we have done to this point could be wiped out if Peres calls elections before October. We might just have to start all over," the official said.
Both Christopher and Peres used the election issue as a means of pressuring Assad to speed up negotiations between Syria and Israel in hopes of working out a peace treaty before the vote, which must be held by next fall.
"Clearly the election calendar will affect the time available and I think that's why we must intensify and accelerate the process at the present time," Christopher said. (119K AIFF sound or 119K WAV sound)
But Christopher has been told privately that some in Peres' Labor Party are pushing him to call early elections to take advantage of the party's current big lead in the polls. Peres, who took over from slain leader Yitzhak Rabin, is riding a wave of popularity that his advisers fear may diminish as time passes and the Rabin assassination slips away from the collective Israeli memory.
And that move would have the effect of putting the brakes, at the very least, on the Syrian-Israeli negotiations which are gathering momentum.
The central issue, no matter when Israeli elections are held, is the intensely emotional one of returning the strategically important Golan Heights to Syria. Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 war.
It is widely believed that the resumption of progress, begun with talks in Maryland on December 27, has been spurred by the realization by Assad that he may lose an opening to recover the Golan if he does not make a deal with Peres' Labor Party before elections. The opposition Likud is opposed to making a deal with Assad.
The Clinton Administration has said that it might send U.S. troops to the Golan to guarantee security if both sides ask. U.S. troops are still in the Sinai Peninsula enforcing the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.
The U.S. election calendar likewise has become a factor. Christopher, who is not serving a second term, wants peace between Israel and Syria to be a crowning achievement of his tenure, which runs out at the end of this year.
Syrian and Israeli negotiators have agreed to resume peace talks January 24 in Maryland and are adding senior military officials to the talks. Christopher, who returned from Israel and Syria Sunday afternoon, will return to the Mideast early next month to keep pushing the peace process.
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