Israeli-Syrian peace talks, which resumed last month amid high expectations after a hiatus of almost four years, have again been halted indefinitely. The talks were to have continued in the United States tomorrow but were postponed just hours before the parties were due to fly out from the Middle East - apparently because the Syrians sought a prior commitment that Israel would ultimately withdraw from the Golan Heights to positions close to those that pertained before the 1967 war, a precondition that Israel has refused to meet.
While Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, expressed open dismay as the delay, blaming Syrian "hesitancy" and fearing that an opportunity for real progress might be missed, other Israeli officials were last night professing themselves indifferent to the open-ended postponement. They characterised it as an example of Syrian brinkmanship and predicted that the talks would resume by next week at the latest.
The delay clearly reflects Syrian dissatisfaction with the results of the last round of negotiations, which ended last week in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. At those talks, Syria's Foreign Minister, Mr Farouq a-Sharaa, sought to establish that a permanent border between Israel and Syria would be based on the lines that existed prior to the 1967 war, in which Israel captured the Golan Heights. But Israel would prefer that the new border be based on the more favourable 1923 lines. The differences between the two lines can be measured in hundreds of metres, and both place the entire Golan Heights in Syrian hands. But the 1967 lines, significantly, saw Syrian troops controlling territory on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, Israel's main natural water source.
Mr Barak has not ruled this out, but neither, to the Syrians' evident indignation, has he yet formally ruled it in.
"I am ready to tell the Syrians more than in the past, but less than they want," Mr Barak is reported to have told colleagues in recent days.
In an interview published in Lebanon yesterday, Mr A-Sharaa said bluntly that Syria had returned from Shepherdstown "without any progress". Echoing that negative tone, the Syrian state media has ruled out an early meeting between Mr Barak and Syrian President Hafez Assad, and criticised Mr Barak and his team for leaking the text of a draft treaty prepared by the Americans.
President Clinton, who has only a few more months to devote to peacemaking before winding down his presidency, travelled to Shepherdstown five times inside a week, and will be disinclined to let the effort wither away.
"They're not as far apart as they might be," Mr Clinton said yesterday, putting the best face on the delay and noting that he was working to break the impasse. Meanwhile, Mr Barak, apparently mending fences in separate talks with the Palestinians, met the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, later yesterday for previously unscheduled talks, diplomatic sources said.
About 20 Israelis were hurt yesterday, none of them badly, when a pipe bomb exploded in the coastal town of Hadera. A previously unknown group claimed responsibility in a communique to a news agency in Beirut.
The Ceann Comhairle of the Dail, Mr Seamus Pattison, yesterday invited his Israeli counterpart, Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, to lead a parliamentary delegation on a visit to Ireland. Mr Pattison is heading the first Irish parliamentary delegation to make a state visit to the Knesset.