JERUSALEM. June 5: Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu will explore a "completely new approach’ to peace talks with Syria that would involve limited agreements on specific issues, a top foreign policy adviser said Tuesday, reports AP.

Zalman Shoval. former Israeli ambassador to Washington and foreign policy spokesman for Netanyahu's Likud Party, said Israel would not focus on a full peace treaty with an exchange of ambas; sadors. as did the outgoing government.

The new Israeli government will see if there is a possibility of some sort of compromise or a completely new approach which will look to incremental progress." Shoval said in an interview with the Associated Press

Syrian President Hafez-Al Assad said after talks with Egypt’s President Hosjri Mubarak on Monday that ne"

was ruling out negotiations until Netanyahu made his post tions clear.

The resumption of the negotiations is out of the ques Uon now." Assad said in Cairo Things are not going in a positive way. We have to be fully alert arid on guard."

Dore Gold, another policy adviser to Netanyahu, said he expected Syria to’ resume talks with Israel under its new lead ership just as it had under the right-wing government of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir at the Madrid peace ' conference in 1991.

1 would stress that Assad sent a delegation to Madrid to negotiate with Israel, and 1 believe they will do so in the future," Gold told AP.

Shoval said the new government will try to wdrk out agreement with Syria on specific issues "without necessarily the envelopie of a former peace treaty, which is problematic."

He said issues such as sharing water, a cease-fire in Lebanon. economic coopera tion and Syria’s presence on the US list of nations that sponsor- terrorism could be negotiated.

For its part, he said. Israel might not insist on having full diplomatic relations as was demanded by outgoing Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

The Peres government, supported by President Clinton. offered an extensive troop pullback on the Golan Heights in exchange for full diplomatic and trade ties with Syria. Syria wants all of the Golan back in exchange for a peace treaty.

We could negotiate things that are more important for both Syria and Israel than necessarily having an ambassador in Tel Aviv and Damascus, which I understand is problematic for Assad.” said Shoval.