Across the Nation Clinton urges Syria to resume talks WASHINGTON - President Clinton talked by telephone with Syrian President Hafez Assad for almost an hour yesterday in a determined effort to persuade Syria to resume interrupted Middle East peace talks. Clinton's call to the wily Syrian autocrat came as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright predicted that Israel and Syria eventually will overcome half a century of animosity and sign a formal peace treaty, despite the indefinite postponement of high-level negotiations that had been scheduled to resume today. Albright and nongovernmental Middle East experts said Assad's objective in delaying the talks was almost certainly to gain procedural advantage, not to torpedo the peace process, which seems closer to success than at any time since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. "The logic of peace has become compelling" for both Syria and Israel, Albright said. "Their leaders will have to take hard, fateful, even painful decisions, but they have increasingly come to understand that there is no better alternative." Albright said the latest snag came over the same procedural issue that twice stalled the two countries' talks earlier this month in Shepherdstown, W.Va. - the order in which the key issues will be discussed and resolved. Syria wants to talk first about the return of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau it lost to Israel in the 1967 Middle East War. Israel wants to discuss the other issues - security guarantees, water rights and the nature of future diplomatic relations between the governments - before considering withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Twice in the earlier round of talks, U.S. officials believed they had brokered a compromise in the dispute, only to see the issue reemerge. "Understandably, both want to be sure their needs will be addressed first," Albright said. "Our challenge is to work with both sides and find ways to narrow their differences to the point where all needs get resolved simultaneously." Other Middle East experts generally agreed. "It was a predictable bump in the road," said Geoffrey Kemp, a Reagan administration Mideast specialist. "It was always anticipated that the early issues, particularly procedural issues, would be very sensitive because ... of the inherent suspicions on both sides." In Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Barak's government tried to show that it could turn to the Palestinians whenever dealings with the Syrians go sour, effectively playing one negotiating partner against the other. As soon as the Israeli-Syrian talks were called off, Barak held a surprise, four-hour meeting that stretched into the early hours yesterday with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. Israeli and Palestinian officials said the two leaders agreed to "accelerate" their efforts to reach a preliminary draft of a final, comprehensive peace settlement by mid-February. Arafat is scheduled to confer with Clinton Thursday at the White House. Initially, U.S. officials had expected that meeting would include Barak, who would have broken away from meetings with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh to attend. With the Syrian talks off, Barak scrubbed his trip to Washington. Arab-Americans spurn airport survey WASHINGTON - An Arab-American group is criticizing a Transportation Department plan to ask airline passengers about their ethnicity and religion - an effort intended to test the level of discrimination felt by fliers. "When we start down the road of asking people to provide this kind of information, where does it take us?" asked James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based Arab-American interest group. The department intends to gather the ethnic and religious background and citizenship information to help it determine if passengers feel they were singled out for scrutiny by security officials for no good reason. In light of the concerns voiced by the Arab American Institute, department spokesperson Bill Mosley said yesterday that no final decision has been reached on whether the surveys will be distributed. "We just want to ensure that no discrimination occurs," Mosley said. The surveys, to begin in April at airports in Detroit, would be given to all passengers on selected flights to gather information on which passengers felt harassed. Zogby said transportation officials asked his group to help inform the Arab-American community about the surveys and help promote them. But Zogby said his group couldn't support asking people intimate questions about their religion or ethnicity because some in his community would feel they were being picked on or would question what would be done with the information. "You mean they want to just start asking people their names and religion and ethnicity. I told them people are going to freak," Zogby said. Zogby said the method of airport security now in use called the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System has produced fewer complaints of discrimination in his community than the earlier selection system. Under the computer-based system, passengers are selected for luggage searches or more extensive X-ray scans of carry-on baggage under a secret criteria that does not include information on race or religion. Before the computers were used, airline officials, again using secret criteria, determined who would be pulled out of line for more extensive searches. Zogby said people who appeared to be Arab were pulled out of line at disproportionately high rates. ''We've proposed they hold some focus groups to see how people feel about being asked those questions,'' Zogby said. ''But the new system seems to be working better. I don't see why they have to start asking people all these questions.'' Fish deaths affect Indiana campaign ANDERSON, Ind. - Riverfront residents knew something was wrong when carp began leaping seven feet out of the water and thrashing about on shore. Before long, dead carp and minnows were piling up on the banks. Hundreds of thousands of fish have collected along a 50-mile stretch of the White River since the water was poisoned five weeks ago by what investigators suspect was an industrial polishing agent used at an auto parts plant. "It is like someone dropped a nuclear bomb," said Josh McDermott, who lives near the river. "The fish had jumped six or seven feet onto the shore. It was like they were jumping out of the water to try and get away from whatever it is." State and federal officials still are trying to pinpoint the source of what has become one of the worst fish kills ever in Indiana. While the full effects won't be known for months, federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation, environmentalists are condemning the state's response as too slow, and opponents of Democratic Gov. Frank O'Bannon are using it to try to undermine his re-election bid. Catfish, bass, sunfish and other game species all died between Anderson and Indianapolis along the White River, which supplies 60 percent of the drinking water to 800,000 people in and around Indianapolis. The water was polluted even before the fish kill. Industries line the banks upstream from Indianapolis. Swimming is not permitted, and though boating and fishing are popular, health officials issue warnings each year about the number and species of fish that are safe to eat. State environmental officials believe that dangerous amounts of sodium dimethyldithiocarbamate, or DMDK, entered Anderson's wastewater treatment plant about Dec. 11 and killed microbes that are needed to break down ammonia from raw sewage. Then, environmental officials said, the high levels of ammonia and carbon disulfide, a byproduct of DMDK, were released into the river. Both chemicals are dangerous to aquatic life. Ten industrial companies in Anderson filter their waste through the treatment plant. Only one - Guide Corp., which makes lights and other auto parts - uses DMDK, according to the Department of Environmental Management. Exactly how the DMDK got into the water is not clear, but Guide is supposed to pretreat its waste before releasing it to the city treatment plant, environmental officials said. Originally on page 2A in the 1-19-2000 issue of the Daily.