PEACE TALKS BY SYRIA, ISRAEL URGED

CLINTON, MUBARAK ASK NEW MIDEAST DIALOGUE

President Clinton and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak yesterday urged Syria and Israel to resume peace talks, calling such dialogue the next important step in the Middle East peace process.

The two presidents held meetings and had lunch at the White House yesterday amid extraordinary security for a foreign visitor. A full block of Pennsylvania Avenue was closed off with concrete barriers, one side of Lafayette Park was fenced in and dozens of uniformed and plainclothes officers patrolled the area.

Clinton, in a joint news conference with Mubarak, said of the peace process, "We have to keep going in this process until all the pieces are in place. . . . I believe that the people of Israel and the people of Syria want to see this process go forward."

The talks, which received a dramatic boost from the signing of the Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization accord at the White House Sept. 13, have been stalled because Syria is reluctant to negotiate with Israel unless it guarantees beforehand that it will return the Golan Heights.

Israel captured that territory from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War, and Clinton said yesterday, "There can't be total peace in the Mideast unless there is some kind of peace with Syria."

Mubarak said he believed the gap between Israel and Syria "can be bridged within a short period of time," but Clinton offered no such prediction. Instead, he said progress on other tracks must be made, including the continuing effort to implement the peace agreement between Israel and the PLO.

Clinton brushed aside a question on the enhanced security, saying only that it was "at a level we thought appropriate because of all the obvious tensions that surround the Middle East peace process. We consider President Mubarak a valuable asset. We just wanted to go out of our way to make sure that he was secure here in our nation."

The news confererence, dominated by foreign policy issues, also included a Clinton call on Ukraine to adhere to its earlier pledges to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and give up long-range nuclear weapons based on its soil when it was part of the Soviet Union. Clinton said he expects Ukraine to "go forward" with those pledges.

The president also made another pitch for the North American Free Trade Agreement's importance to American interests. Clinton said as the Nov. 17 scheduled date for the House vote on NAFTA approaches, "you will see an enormous increase in my own personal efforts."

Clinton has a series of meetings with undecided members of Congress on the issue this week and has at least two and perhaps three public events scheduled to promote the trade pact.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.