JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Tuesday that in a future peace with Syria, U.S. soldiers would be needed in the Golan Heights to oversee a treaty, but not to protect Israel's borders.


"When there is a peace accord with Syria, U.S. soldiers will be needed to supervise the implementation of the military codicil to the agreement. But we have not yet reached that stage," Rabin's office quoted him as having told the visiting chairman of the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili.


Rabin "emphasized that Israel is not asking that American troops defend its borders," his office said in a statement.


Rabin met Shalikashvili hours before the expected arrival of U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who opened a new round of Middle East shuttle diplomacy Tuesday in Damascus.


Christopher, who met Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, is trying to break a three-year deadlock in Israeli-Syrian talks.


Syria insists that peace should include a full Israeli withdrawal from the strategic Golan Heights, captured in the 1967 Middle East War. Israel says it wants Damascus to normalize ties with the Jewish state before it reveals the extent of a pullback.


Assad has accused Israel of blocking U.S. peace efforts, characterizing Israel's positions as including impossible demands.


Israel and Washington have discussed the possibility of a U.S. peacekeeping force on the Golan since the Bush administration, when aides to then-secretary of state James Baker broached the subject to Israeli officials.


The issue resurfaced earlier this year as a part of Israeli proposals for a phased, 5 to 8 year withdrawal from most of the heights. Christopher has indicated he is open to a U.S. force on the Golan, but stressed the matter must first be agreed between Israel and Syria.


As Israeli and U.S. officials met in Jerusalem, PLO and Israeli negotiators were holding talks in Cairo on the next stage of self-rule in Gaza and the West Bank in an atmosphere of Palestinian suspicion about Israel's commitment to earlier agreements.


At previous rounds of talks in October, Palestinian negotiators complained that Israel would not treat redeployment in areas still under Israeli control as a subject separate from elections.


Palestinian concerns have been further heightened by recent Israeli statements suggesting that the need to protect Jewish settlers called for a change in last year's peace plan, in particular concerning the pullout.


But Palestinian delegation chief Nabil Shaath told reporters that one of the two groups of negotiators would now concentrate on details of Israel's next troop redeployment -- an emphasis that should ease Palestinian misgivings.


Uri Savir, head of the Israeli delegation and director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, gave a new commitment to the Oslo agreement Tuesday morning. He told Israel Radio, "This in essence is the first time that there will be more detailed negotiations on the next stage of the interim settlement ... The essence of the beginning will focus on ... how to move forward while sticking to the Oslo accords.


"And simultaneously, in another committee or another subcommittee, the negotiations will continue that began already in practice two months ago on the character of the elections that must be held in the West Bank and Gaza -- again in fulfillment of the Declaration of Principles," Savir said.