MIDEAST . . . SYRIA WARMS UP TO PEACE

Even though Secretary of State Warren Christopher's shuttle diplomacy to Damascus last week seemed to yield little progress in moving Syria toward a peace agreement with Israel, Syria's foreign minister today said his country would soon end a 10-month deadlock on the issue. The minister, Farouk al-Sharaa, announced today in Beirut that full-scale peace talks could resume after an "exchange of ideas" between small Israeli and Syrian delegations. The Lebanese backdrop was no coincidence: Robert Pelletreau, assistant secretary of state and the first senior U.S. envoy to visit there in more than a year, was on hand to try to wrap Israeli peace talks with Lebanon into the package.