U.S. Is Hoping Conference Can Shake Off Old Ghosts : History: Past failures do not bode well for the session. But there are major differences this time, optimists say.

WASHINGTON —  The year was 1973, and the setting was Geneva. A U.S. secretary of state, after arduous travels, had finally persuaded representatives of Israel and its Arab neighbors to sit down and talk about peace.

But when the delegations arrived, they promptly fell into a prolonged fight about seating arrangements. Then they got up, made a series of vituperative speeches about each other, adjourned and never met again.

Henry A. Kissinger, who was secretary of state at the time, proclaimed it all a great success.

As Secretary of State James A. Baker III prepares to convene a new conference in a new city, old ghosts of conferences past leer from the backdrops, reminding all comers that the Middle East--an area that has known six wars and little peace in the past half-century--is a region where progress is usually measured in millimeters.

“If people simply reiterate their well-known, hard-line positions and scowl at each other and look grim, that’s par for the course,” says William B. Quandt of the Brookings Institution, a former National Security Council Mideast expert in the Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford administrations.

The history of past negotiations, adds Robert E. Hunter, another former National Security Council official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies here, is that “the fact it’s held at all is the success.” Expecting much more than that from the conference is unrealistic, he says.

The key effect of conferences such as this is to change psychology, both men agree. “You get a picture of the Syrians and the Israelis in the same mug shot,” Hunter says. “That sends a message all across the Arab world: You’re not going to be able to drive the Jews into the sea.”

But months, perhaps a year or more, will go by before the depth of those psychological changes can begin to be gauged, both men predict.

Past conferences have never been able to bridge the fundamental differences that separate Israel from its neighbors. But Administration officials are hopeful that this conference will be different enough to succeed.

The hope, policy-makers say, is that the conference can play a role similar to the dramatic trip of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem in November, 1977. Sadat’s trip powerfully changed attitudes in both Israel and Egypt, allowing people in both countries to believe that peace was possible.

Even with that boost, of course, the peace process nearly lost its momentum. Final agreement was possible only when, 10 months later, President Carter summoned Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David, the presidential retreat in the hills of western Maryland, for a final round of negotiations that led to an Israeli-Egyptian peace accord.

Unlike the Madrid meeting, Camp David was “an intensely personal” discussion, as Carter described it in his memoirs. The three leaders closeted themselves with a small group of aides for 13 autumn days. Although intense public attention was focused on the meetings, the three were often out of the public eye and were able to reach their historic agreement in private.

The Madrid meeting more closely resembles the public conference that Kissinger assembled in Geneva two months after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Kissinger has insisted that the meeting succeeded because it “opened the door” to later agreements. But many others have regarded the Geneva meeting as a failure. In fact, Bush Administration officials vetoed the idea of convening the new conference in Switzerland for fear of drawing too close a comparison with Kissinger’s session.

Administration officials and outside experts on the region cite two major differences between the Geneva meeting and the current session that they say provide some hope that the outcome this time could be better.

First, never before have Israel and all of its Arab neighbors agreed to sit together at a single conference table, as they have agreed to do in Madrid. In Geneva, for example, an empty chair was placed at the conference table for Syria, which had decided late in the process not to attend.

A second major difference involves the role of the Soviet Union. In Geneva, the Soviets took part as supporters of Arab radicalism. Indeed, the long fight about seating in Geneva began when the Soviet foreign minister of that time, Andrei A. Gromyko, unveiled a proposed seating chart in which Egypt, Syria and the Soviet Union would be stationed on one side of the table and Israel, Jordan and the United States on the other. Kissinger, along with Jordanian and Egyptian officials, rejected that idea, fearing the symbolic message of Jordanian isolation and Soviet support for the Arabs.

In Madrid, by contrast, the Soviets will take part as a junior associate of the United States, with Soviet Foreign Minister Boris D. Pankin serving as backup to Baker. Administration officials hope that lineup will help persuade the Arabs--particularly the Syrians--that they have no alternative but to reach a peace agreement.

A major difference on the negative side, however, involves the degree of preparations leading up to the conference. The 1973 conference came after a series of meetings between Israeli and Egyptian military representatives aimed at figuring out ways to disengage the armies of the two countries. Although both countries were suspicious of each other, Quandt points out, both also came to the conference with a clear goal--negotiating an agreement that would allow the two militaries to separate.

Geneva opened the way to Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy”--referring to the series of flights that Kissinger and his staff made between Egypt and Israel--which led to a disengagement pact. That pact, in turn, led to a series of negotiations that opened the way for Camp David, at which Israel agreed to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a peace agreement.

No such lengthy process has taken place in this case. This time, instead, all sides have agreed to come to the conference because, in the end, none was willing to turn down an invitation from the United States.

War, Then Talks: A Mideast History

May, 1948--Israel declares independence and is invaded by five Arab nations. War ends in January, 1949, with indefinite cease-fire.

October, 1956--Israel, Britain and France invade Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes Suez Canal. Under pressure from United States, Soviet Union and United Nations, armies withdraw by year’s end.

June, 1967--Six-Day War, in which Israel captures significant territory from Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

November, 1967--U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 242 as a formula for Mideast peace.

February, 1969--Israeli-Egyptian fighting is renewed along Suez Canal, dragging on at low level for 18 months despite international mediation efforts and resulting in hundreds of deaths.

October, 1973--Yom Kippur War. Arab nations cut off oil to United States in retaliation for its support for Israel. The next month, Israel and Egypt sign cease-fire accord after intense shuttle diplomacy by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

December, 1973--First Arab-Israeli peace conference convenes in Geneva, attended by Israel, Egypt, Jordan, United States, Soviet Union and United Nations, boycotted by Syria. Separate bilateral talks later lead to troop disengagements, but Geneva conference does not lead to an overall peace and is indefinitely adjourned.

November, 1977--Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes first Arab leader to visit Israel.

September, 1978--President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin meet with Sadat at Camp David, Md., and sign accords that lead to first treaty between Israel and an Arab nation.

June, 1982--Israel invades Lebanon to drive out the PLO, leading to lengthy Israeli presence in southern Lebanon.