HOSTILE page 120

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Featuring:

"complete withdrawal" from the
Golan Heights added to the hos-
tile mood on the Hill.
And the heightened anxiety
about international terrorism in
the wake of the explosion of TWA
Flight 800 has focused more at-
tention on the nations that sup-
port terrorism, a list that includes
Syria.
The renewed congressional in-
terest in Syria came as special
Mideast envoy Dennis Ross
headed off for Damascus and
other Middle Eastern capitals.
The State Department angrily
denied claims in a Wall Street
Journal column by Michael
Ledeen, a national security con-
sultant during the Reagan ad-
ministration, that Mr. Ross had
been "repudiated" by the new Is-
raeli government.
`The story is absolutely 100 per-
cent false," said State Department
spokesman Nicholas Burns. "It's
fiction. It's a fabrication."
Mr. Ross, long a favorite tar-
get of hard-line pro-Israel groups
and a virtual pin cushion since

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LE PAINTY (France)

VOTRE NOM (Paris)

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6ISPA KNITS (Milan)

MARGARET O'LEARY KNITS

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the election of Israeli Prime Min-
ister Binyamin Netanyahu,
planned stops in Israel and Jor-
dan, as well as Syria; also on the
schedule was a meeting with
PLO chief Yassir Arafat in Gaza.
Several recent developments
— including the agreement be-
tween Israel and Hezbollah guer-
rillas that resulted in the return
of the bodies of several missing
Israeli servicemen — convinced
Mr. Ross and his boss, Secretary
of State Warren Christopher,
that there might be some room
for progress on the Syrian-Israel
front despite the impasse be-
tween the new, tougher govern-
ment in Jerusalem and an
always-balky Assad.
"It's very much an explorato-
ry trip," said a leading Jewish ac-
tivist here. "They want to see if
there are any new openings; they
believe there are ways to work
around the edges of the issues.
The important thing, from their
vantage point, is to avoid any im-
pression that they are giving up
on the Syrian talks."

Youth Are Served
A Campaign Pitch

ewish summer interns

working in Washington are
getting a high-powered ed-
ucation, thanks to the ef-
forts of the National Jewish
Democratic Council and its Stu-
dent Leadership Series.
A group of interns heard from
Ann Lewis, one of the key archi-
tects of the Clinton-Gore re-elec-
tion effort, who exhorted them to
combine political activism with
Jewish identity, and warned that
Jewish support for the Democrats
is especially critical now because
of the growing influence of the re-
ligious right in the Republican
Party.
Ms. Lewis also expressed sat-
isfaction that the Clinton-Gore
team is successfully framing their
candidate's message for the up-
coming election, while the Bob
Dole campaign continues to sput-
ter because of an indistinct mes-
sage.
Earlier, the NJDC program of-
fered sessions with Ms. Lewis'
brother, Rep. Barney Frank, D-
Mass., one of the House's most
outspoken liberals and a forceful
advocate of gay rights, and Rep.
Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I.
And to conclude the series, the
interns will hear from Rep. Nita
Lowey, D-N.Y., a leading Jewish
legislator, and Rep. John Lewis,
D-Ga., a member of the congres-
sional Black Caucus who has been
an influential supporter of Israel.
On the other side of the parti-
san divide, the National Jewish
Coalition is focusing its attention -
on building a network of Jewish

161

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122

in our
Classified
Section

Barney Frank: Outspoken liberal.

Capitol Hill staffers, according to
executive director Matthew
Brooks — and on the upcoming
GOP convention.
The Jewish Republican group
also is putting the finishing -touch-
es on a rebuttal to the exhaustive
NJDC report criticizing Mr. Dole's
record on Israel. The NJC will re-
lease the report sometime in the
early fall "to get maximum expo-
sure," Mr. Brooks said.
The two partisan groups, which
spend considerable time and en-
ergy bashing each other, will try
to bash baseballs next week in
their first-ever bipartisan softball
game. The Democrats expect their
fund-raising director, John Mantz,
to be a- standout !because he is a
Little League veteran,"-according
to an optimistic NJDC official. ❑