Christopher’s Negotiating Seems to Bear Fruit in Mideast Peace Efforts : Diplomacy: Israelis, Palestinians agree to ‘refocus’ on issues despite last week’s violence in southern Lebanon.

JERUSALEM —  Efforts by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher to revive the stalemated Middle East peace talks appeared to bear some early fruit Tuesday as Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to “refocus” on substantive issues despite last week’s violence in southern Lebanon.

U.S. officials, while purposely guarded about the substance of Christopher’s discussions with the two sides, said they came away relieved that the fighting in Lebanon had not damaged the peace process irreparably and that all sides were willing to get the talks going again.

At the same time, Palestinian negotiators agreed to review a revised draft of a U.S. “declaration of principles” to be used in hammering out an interim peace settlement and to come up with some “detailed suggestions” on Thursday, just before Christopher is scheduled to leave the region.

The Palestinians had rejected an earlier version of the U.S. proposal.

Israeli and Palestinian officials also appeared to open the way for renewed discussions over a pending proposal under which Israel would provide limited autonomy for Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and in the city of Jericho as a first step toward full-fledged “empowerment.”

Although U.S. officials warned that there still had been no breakthroughs on substantive issues, they said they thought the meetings had helped put the negotiations back on track. “Despite the difficult circumstances (of the stalemate and the violence in Lebanon), I would say that we have refocused the discussions,” Christopher said after talking with the Palestinians.

Christopher spent two hours talking with Palestinian representatives, including Faisal Husseini, the delegation leader, after meeting for 45 minutes each with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and paying a courtesy call on President Ezer Weizman.

Despite the signs of modest progress, U.S. officials conceded that Christopher still must deal with a second, possibly more crucial sticking point in the 21-month-old peace negotiations--the stalemated talks between Israel and Syria.

The two governments have agreed in principle on a plan under which Israel would withdraw from the Golan Heights if Syria guaranteed that it would never use the area as a launching point for attacks on Israel. But they are at odds over details on how to carry out the plan.

Christopher is scheduled to travel to Damascus today to meet with Syrian President Hafez Assad, but he apparently will go with nothing new to offer from the Israeli side, as he initially had hoped to be able to do, according to U.S. and Israeli sources.

Officials said that although Christopher pressed Rabin to spell out his demands in more detail, the Israeli prime minister refused, insisting instead that Syria make some gesture to demonstrate its own sincerity.

Itamar Rabinovitch, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, who was in on Tuesday’s discussions, said after the talks with Christopher that “the next stage has to happen in Damascus.”

At the same time, top Israeli officials had some rare praise for Syria in the wake of its role this past week in helping to persuade the pro-Iranian Hezbollah guerrillas to accept a U.S.-brokered cease-fire that ended the violence in southern Lebanon.

Peres, for example, told reporters after his session with Christopher that “in spite of all the difficulties, we believe that Syria and its president made a strategic decision to move toward peace.” He urged the other parties in the talks--Jordan and the Palestinians--to push ahead.

It was not immediately clear how the Palestinians would respond to the revised version of the U.S. draft for a “declaration of principles” for negotiating an interim Israeli-Palestinian accord. The group is expected to spend today conferring with the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunis, Tunisia.

Hanan Ashrawi, spokeswoman for the Palestinians, said that despite its anger over Israeli counterattacks on Hezbollah, the PLO would push to renew the talks.

Times staff writer Michael Parks contributed to this story.