DAMASCUS -- On a foggy morning a year ago, Syria's vice president and a senior security aide telephoned President Hafez Assad and suggested, tentatively, that they come around for coffee.


The aging president was wearing a long Arab robe and his face was drawn when his visitors arrived.


"He opened the door and said, 'Is it the army in revolt?'" said one Damascus palace watcher, recalling the now often-told account.


Apparently, neither man answered for a moment. "No one wanted to tell him, you see."


In a region where an army revolt can spell instant death and even civil war, the real news was just as bad, maybe worse: Assad's eldest son, Basil, was dead, killed in a car accident that morning.


Dead with him was any dream Assad may have had of smoothly handing over his rule to the young man who had been carefully cultivated in the top echelons of power in Syria.


Now Assad's next-oldest son, Bashar, has been brought back from medical school in London to begin what appears to be the long process of grooming for the Syrian leadership.


Throughout the Middle East, the generation of Arab leaders who rose to power in the turbulent coups and revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s is growing old.


The peacemaking with Israel is largely the peace of old men entering the twilight of their violent reigns. The one-man regimes of the most decisive years of the modern Middle East are beginning to wrinkle and age.


From Syria and Jordan to Morocco, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, quiet talk of succession has begun, and its outcome will have much to say about whether the peacemaking of the fathers can be visited upon the sons.


Even discounting monarchies with a constitutional line of succession -- whose futures are in reality anything but certain -- a recent Arab League survey showed that future leadership is uncertain in at least 10 other Arab countries, including Algeria, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Sudan and Tunisia.


Nowhere is the succession drama more precarious than in Syria, where Assad, 64, holds the key to peace with Israel, even as the prospect of his demise raises fears of chaos in Damascus.


Assad brought an end to years of political turbulence and coups in Syria when he ascended to power in a bloodless coup in 1970. Now, his tiny sect of Alawite Muslims has tight control over the massive military-security-intelligence apparatus that governs Syria and its Sunni Muslim majority.


No one in the Syrian capital is ready to predict what would happen if Assad, who suffered a heart attack more than a decade ago and who has looked visibly weaker in recent years, were to die now. Many predict that Syria's most influential Alawite generals would unite around a common new figurehead and attempt to maintain the status quo.


But it is just as possible that they would begin feuding among themselves, sparking a conflict between the Sunni and Alawite sects.


Elsewhere in the Arab world, the future is equally in doubt:


?In Jordan, King Hussein's younger brother, Hassan, has been designated crown prince and heir apparent. Yet Hassan's close sympathies with native Jordanians have caused grumbling among the country's large Palestinian population.


?In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak last year broke his pledge to serve only two six-year terms by standing for a third term. Now, Egyptians are wondering: Will Mubarak, 66, seek a fourth? Or will Egypt provide a new test case for the Arab world, in which a leader retires peacefully -- and still alive -- then hands over the reins of authority to a freely elected successor?


?In Iraq, President Saddam Hussein has often seemed to be grooming his son, Uday, as his successor. But the fractious ethnic and religious nature of Iraqi society makes turmoil a virtual certainty unless a powerful force within the military grabs authority.


?In the Palestine Liberation Organization, Chairman Yasser Arafat, 65, faces his first election, in the Gaza Strip, probably sometime this year. But he faces rising opposition from the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas and other factions opposed to peace with Israel.


?In Saudi Arabia, King Fahd, believed to be 73 years old, is declining both physically and mentally. The line of succession is clear, with Fahd's brother, Abdullah, also in his 70s, long designated as crown prince. But with Islamic militancy providing the most important challenge to the royal family, some analysts say it is likely the Saudis will look soon to a younger heir.