UNITED NATIONS - Israel's foreign minister on Wednesday urged Syria to start talking peace without conditions and warned Lebanon that Israel will pull out of south Lebanon unilaterally unless it starts negotiating.

David Levy used the U.N. General Assembly to reiterate Israel's longstanding position that a united Jerusalem will remain the capital of the Jewish state - an issue that is supposed to be decided in final status negotiations with the Palestinians.

While Israel remains committed to a comprehensive Middle East peace, Levy said its negotiating partners were waging ''a constant political war'' against the Jewish state in international forums, which he called ''intolerable.''

Levy addressed the General Assembly six days after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat appealed to its 188 member nations for increased support for an independent Palestinian state which he said would be established in the coming year.

Arafat said the breakthrough land-for-security agreement he signed on Sept. 5 with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave ''new hope for restoring the peace process'' because it set the stage for final talks and included a specific time line.

Levy said Israel is determined to reach a framework agreement for the final status negotiations by February 2000.

But Israel cannot tolerate its negotiating partners pursuing the peace process on one hand and making anti-Israel declarations and resolutions in the General Assembly and other forums on the other, he said.

This contradictory approach to Israel raises serious questions about the concept of peace envisioned by Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians, he said.

Responding to Levy's speech, Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian U.N. observer, said there were no anti-Israel U.N. resolutions but there are ''many U.N. resolutions that are anti-illegal Israeli actions.''

Israel captured the eastern part of the city in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and Levy stressed: ''United Jerusalem, under the sovereignty of Israel, remains and will remain forever the capital of the state of Israel.''

The Palestinians regard Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and Al-Kidwa objected to Levy's statement.

The Israeli minister called on Syria's leaders to resume negotiations without preconditions.

Syria insists that Israel honor an alleged promise by then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 to return the entire Golan Heights, which were captured from Syria in 1967, in exchange for a peace deal.

Israel maintains there was no such promise and Levy said it couldn't accept a precondition for talks that demands acceptance of the final outcome.

''I call upon the leaders of Syria - really, in view of what we've lived through together: Enough hesitation. It is time to talk. Meetings and discussion are not political sacrifices. They are basic necessities,'' he said.

Syria is the main power broker in Lebanon and wants to link any Israeli troop withdrawal to a return of the strategic Golan Heights. Lebanon has refused one-on-one talks, insisting that Israel conduct joint peace negotiations with Beirut and Damascus.

Israel carved out a ''security zone'' in 1985 in southern Lebanon to protect settlements along its border from attack by anti-Israel groups, including Hezbollah. Since then about 250 Israeli soldiers have died in attacks, a price many Israelis regard as too high.

Earlier this month, Barak set July 7, 2000, as a final date for evacuating the 1,500 Israeli troops.

But the critical question is whether Hezbollah will continue to attack Israeli villages once troops leave the border zone.

Levy said Israel wants an agreement with Lebanon but is prepared to pull out unilaterally.

''We will not be held hostage ... to a stubborn and defiant attitude for much longer,'' he said. ''We will make our own independent decisions, as we see fit.''

Later, he told reporters: ''If they stand defiant ... we will leave Lebanon. There's more than one option to ensure the security of our inhabitants in the region. Somebody else should take this into consideration, whether this situation is better than an agreement.''

MOSCOW - Russia set conditions Wednesday for ending its harsh air war on Chechnya, demanding that Chechen leaders denounce terrorism and extradite ''criminals'' whom Russians accuse of masterminding a recent series of blasts at apartment blocks, killing 300 people.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin set the conditions, which were the first official outline of Russia's goals in the chaotic southern republic. Chechnya won de facto independence from Moscow three years ago after a brutal separatist war. A new conflict was ignited last month when a Chechen-led force invaded the Russian republic of Dagestan, with pledges to set up a pan-Caucasus Islamic state.

The prime minister's comments suggested a need to satisfy concern over just where this conflict is heading. A weeklong bombing campaign against Chechnya has prompted some Russians to worry that a ground war is next, with predictable casualties, disruption to coming elections and economic damage. Although a new survey showed that almost half of the Russian population approves of the aerial assault, 36 percent disapprove, this despite wide public outrage of the dynamiting of apartments.

Mr. Putin said that Russia's objectives were limited. ''We are expecting the Chechen leadership to finally condemn terrorism in explicit and definite terms.''

He demanded they also ''extradite the criminals for whom a search has been declared'' in connection with the bombing and the invasion of Dagestan. Russia has not published a list of terror suspects, said to number 17, but officials have named the Chechen military leader Shamil Basayev and a shadowy, Saudi-born guerrilla named Khattab, as the prime movers.

Mr. Putin's spokesman also said the Chechens must agree to help stop cross-border violence and regional crime.

Mr. Putin made his comments in conjunction with Russia's first diplomatic move to end the crisis. He sent Magomedali Magomedov, who heads the Dagestani Parliament, to meet the Chechen president, Aslan Maskhadov. Talks were supposed to take place inside Dagestan, but the trip ended in disarray. Angry Dagestanis blocked the convoys of both officials, protesting that the pair ought to have met before all the fighting. No new date for meeting was set.

It is uncertain how much authority Mr. Maskhadov exercises over Mr. Basayev or, for that matter, the country as a whole. Chechnya is wracked by factional rivalries, and clan leaders control their own armies. Still, the invitation to Mr. Maskhadov suggested that Russia was looking to at least split the Chechens.

Concern that the war might expand on the ground has been mounting in Moscow. Russians fear a repeat of the 1994-1996 war, which resulted in defeat, the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers, the slaughter of many more Chechen fighters and civilians, and de facto independence for Chechnya.

Russian generals boast that they will tame the breakaway republic and in effect reverse the results of the last war. Mr. Putin said this week that Russia will rely on air power to ''eliminate the bandit formations,'' but he also speaks hazily of ''special operations'' on land.

On Wednesday, the newspaper Segodnya published an elaborate account of a plan to conquer half of Chechnya and set up a puppet government. The invasion would be launched from positions now being established by Russia on Chechnya's borders to block infiltration.

The invaders would move methodically and take the relatively easy to hold northern plains. The Interfax news agency said invasion plans have been worked out, but do not include taking of Grozny, scene of intense fighting last time.

In the meantime, Russian jets continue to pound Chechnya, especially near Grozny, but also in the far west and east. Wednesday's targets included oil depots, roads and bridges. At least 70,000 refugees have flooded into Igushetia, another Caucasian republic, and many are camped out near the border in makeshift shelters.

Whether the war expands or not, Russian leaders will have to take into account skittish public opinion, which was instrumental in prompting Russia's retreat from Chechnya three years ago. Parliamentary elections are but three months away and the presidential vote, in which Mr. Putin is a candidate, less than a year off.

Perhaps nowhere in Russia does the cry for revenge over terror blend more uneasily with concern over the war than on Kashirskoye Road in Moscow. About 120 Russians died when an apartment block was demolished by dynamite. The site has been cleared of rubble and only a tall wooden memorial cross and floral tributes sit on the vacant land.

Surprisingly, even here, doubts about the war on Chechnya surface. Few believe that bombing will end the terror threat and some think it is wrong to punish Chechens massively for the actions of a few. Most of all, no one seems to understand what will happen next.

''I think bombing can be effective to a point, but then what?'' said Alexander Vakhrameyev, a truck driver. ''Eliminating the bandits from the air is not possible and I'm opposed to a ground invasion. In an invasion, our people die.''

Turkey's Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit raised hopes yesterday for an eventual settlement of the dispute between Greece and Turkey over the ethnically divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

The prime minister, in his first visit to the United States since Turkey and Greece found a wellspring of sympathy for each other in the wake of earthquake disasters in both places, accepted President Clinton's offer to dispatch a special envoy to the region.

Mr. Clinton seized the moment of the Turkish leader's visit to the White House to offer a helping hand.

Administration officials who participated in the session said Mr. Ecevit responded by welcoming Clinton's suggestion that his special envoy, Al Moses, head to Turkey as early as next week.

One official said Mr. Clinton stressed that both parties needed "to come to the tables with no preconditions."

He praised the emerging climate of cordiality and respect between historic enemies.

The president is expected to travel to Turkey and Greece in November.

"This meeting is occurring in an atmosphere of hope, in a positive atmosphere," Mr. Clinton said, just prior to his meeting with the Turkish leader. "It recognizes not only our longtime strategic partnership with Turkey but recent developments and this prime minister's leadership, and I appreciate it very much."

Mr. Clinton said the two leaders had much to discuss, including the progress in dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake, the improving relationships between Turkey and Greece and the European Union, questions involving Cyprus, and human rights.

The two leaders were to discuss U.S. support for an east-to-west oil pipeline from Azerbaijan through Turkey, which the United States favors.

Turkish troops invaded Northern Cyprus in 1974 after a coup on the island by a militant group favoring Cypriot union with Greece toppled a neutralist cleric leader. Cyprus remains divided today.

"What we've been working for all along is the resumption of U.N.-sponsored talks [on Cyprus] without preconditions, and we hope that somehow we can find a way to get there," Mr. Clinton said.

Turkey has been lobbying for integration into the European Union, but the Western economic clique has rebuffed Turkey's applications, citing the government for its rampant human rights violations.

President Clinton said yesterday that Turkey was making progress, and the "actions that have been taken to improve relations with Greece have helped."

He continued: "There's been a change in attitude in some of the European capitals about Turkey's integration . . . I think some of the actions on human rights have helped. And I think more movement in those directions will eventually get to the result that Turkey wants."

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters earlier that the president "will recognize the encouraging signs of joint cooperation between Greece and Turkey over the two devastating earthquakes," and will hope for more cooperation between the two countries.

A catastrophic earthquake killed roughly 15,000 people in Turkey in August. Greece was rocked by an earthquake in September. The two countries have offered each other condolences and aid.

Greece has said it would support European Union aid for Turkey.

Mr. Ecevit is expected to ask Washington to secure $5 billion worth of housing construction bonds, and for an easing of a textile quota, which limits Turkish imports.

Textiles and ready-to-wear items make up 10 percent of Turkey's gross national product, and textile exports constituted nearly half of the $2.2 billion in Turkish exports to the United States last year.

Mr. Ecevit told reporters, while en route to Washington on Sunday, that his country has suffered direct losses of about $30 billion to $35 billion because of sanctions against neighboring Iraq.

MOSCOW--Russia said Wednesday it was ready for talks with Chechnya if it condemned terrorism, but Russian planes bombed the rebel region for the seventh day for harboring what Moscow says are Islamic guerrillas.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stopped short of threatening a full scale land attack on Chechnya, but kept up the pressure on the rebel region by saying he had not ruled it out.

Russian troops had occupied peaks overlooking two villages in the region, Interfax news agency, quoting comments by individual officers. But Russian military officials, contacted by telephone in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, said they had no information of any movement into the territory.

Putin, speaking to reporters in Russia's second city St. Petersburg, made no direct comment on the report.

"But nothing is done without the government," he said. "As to what happens a meter forward or a meter back, we'll see."

Western analysts have suggested that any Russian land incursion might be limited to Russian troops taking a slice of territory to set up a buffer zone.

The guerrillas have invaded the neighboring region of Dagestan and are accused of planning bomb blasts in Russian cities in which nearly 300 people died. Chechen officials have denied involvement in the incursions or blasts.

Further underlining the high regional tensions, the leaders of Chechnya and Dagestan, on Chechnya's eastern border, called off a meeting after angry Dagestani villagers blocked roads to protest incursions by the Chechen-led fighters.

Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu briefed President Boris Yeltsin on relief plans for refugees fleeing the strikes into adjacent regions, mostly to Ingushetia, to the west of Chechnya.

Ingushetia President Ruslan Aushev said more than 70,000 refugees had entered his region, where camps were overflowing with distraught women children and the elderly. NTV television said authorities there feared the number could hit 200,000.

Aushev warned the Kremlin against launching any ground attack on Chechnya.

"I think this can only be negative. ... We need to fight terrorists and bandits, but not like a bull in a china shop," Aushev told NTV television. "Rather, we should treat like colleagues normal Chechens who want to fight terrorism."

Earlier in the day, as Russian aircraft pounded new Chechen targets, Putin offered an olive branch to Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov.

"We expect the Chechen leadership finally to condemn terrorism, clearly and firmly, and to express their readiness to hand over the criminals," Putin said in televised comments during a trip to the central Russian town of Cheboksari.

But later, quoted by Interfax news agency, he said he did not rule out launching a full scale invasion. He vowed however there would be no repeat of Russia's ill-fated 1994-1996 war in which tens of thousands of people died.

"I have never said there will not be a ground operation," Itar-Tass quoted Putin as saying.

Maskhadov had been due to meet Dagestan leader Magomedali Magomedov Wednesday in the border town of Khasavyurt, where three years ago Russia signed a truce with Chechen separatists ending a two-year war in which tens of thousands died.

In the Chechen capital Grozny, eyewitnesses said Russian aircraft had bombed targets for a seventh day, mainly in western districts. Interfax said at least 11 people had been killed.

U.S. SAYS GO EASY ON BOMBING

The United States, meanwhile, advised Russia to go easy on bombing Chechnya and refrain from any ground offensive into the troubled territory.

The commander of Russia's Air Force said warplanes had strund a missed any of our targets," he told ORT television. "We are able to keep track of every strike and assume full responsibility for them."

Russian newspapers said the Defense Ministry had drawn up plans for a phased land invasion which would give federal forces control of low-lying northern areas including Grozny.

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze denied suggestions that weapons were getting to the fighters from his ex-Soviet republic. They were supplied by Russian troops, he said.

"If weapons have turned up in Chechnya, including the most modern ones, they ... seep from Russian bases and are sold by Russian military officers. There are no other sources," Shevardnadze said during a visit to Armenia.

WHEN asked for his view on western civilisation, Mahatma Gandhi is famously supposed to have said that it would be a good idea. Poor countries are equally cynical about western governments’ commitment to free trade. With good reason: America and Europe are forever lecturing developing countries about the need to open their markets, yet they do their best to keep out many poor-country exports. But all is not too bleak. New moves are afoot that may help poor countries to do better out of the world trading system.

In 1993, when the Uruguay round, the last big push towards global free trade, was completed, it was said that poor countries would benefit most. Six years on, and only two months before the proposed launch of a new “millennium” round of trade-liberalisation talks in Seattle in November, that claim sounds rather hollow.

Developing countries have three big complaints. First, they are being forced to open their markets too far, too fast. Second, rich countries are conspiring to keep their markets closed. And third, they lack the resources and information to negotiate effectively, to implement trade agreements and to exploit world trade rules to their advantage.

The first complaint is wide of the mark. Although developing countries agreed to make deep tariff cuts in the Uruguay round, that is a gain not a loss. Poor countries benefit from opening their markets, even unilaterally, since consumers can buy cheaper imports and foreign competition spurs domestic producers to greater efficiency.

But there is a good deal of truth in their other two charges. Rich countries cut their tariffs by less in the Uruguay round than poor ones did. Since then, they have found new ways to close their markets, notably by imposing anti-dumping duties on imports they deem “unfairly cheap”. Rich countries are particularly protectionist in many of the sectors where developing countries are best able to compete, such as agriculture, textiles and clothing. As a result, according to a new study by Thomas Hertel, of Purdue University, and Will Martin, of the World Bank, rich countries’ average tariffs on manufacturing imports from poor countries are four times higher than those on imports from other rich countries. This imposes a big burden on poor countries. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that they could export $700 billion more a year by 2005 if rich countries did more to open their markets.

Poor countries are also hobbled by a lack of know-how. Many had little understanding of what they had signed up to in the Uruguay round. That ignorance is now costing them dear. Michael Finger of the World Bank and Philip Schuler of the University of Maryland estimate that implementing commitments to improve trade procedures and establish technical and intellectual-property standards can cost more than a year’s development budget for the poorest countries.

Moreover, in those areas where poor countries could benefit from world trade rules, they are often unable to do so. To be sure, the World Trade Organisation has enabled some poor countries to win trade disputes against rich ones. Thanks to the WTO, Costa Rica can now sell its underwear more easily in America, and Ecuador should soon be able to export more bananas to the EU. But on the whole, poor countries are justified in feeling they get a raw deal. Of the WTO’s 134 members, 29 do not even have missions at its headquarters in Geneva. Many more can barely afford to bring cases to the WTO. The WTO itself cannot help much: its annual budget for technical assistance is only SFr741,000 ($480,000), and this cannot be used to help one country bring a case against another.

Still, there are reasons for muted optimism. Mike Moore, the WTO’s new boss, has made helping developing countries his priority. He is already banging the drum for them, and is lobbying for a 13-fold increase (to SFr10m) in the WTO’s technical-assistance budget. Separately, several countries, led by Colombia and the Netherlands, are setting up an advisory centre to inform poor countries about WTO law and help them to bring dispute-settlement cases.

Developing countries are also taking matters into their own hands. They are better prepared for the millennium round than they were for the Uruguay round. Seventeen of them (known confusingly as the G15) met in August in the Indian city of Bangalore to draw up a common negotiating agenda. Although they did not agree on everything, they plan to play a more active role in this round. They are determined to resist American attempts to foist labour and environmental standards on them. And many have a positive agenda for further liberalisation, in such areas as shipping, construction and the movement of people, in contrast to the blocking role they often played in the past.

Rich countries are also doing their bit. They are already committed under the Uruguay round to allow textiles to come in freely by 2005. In the millennium round, poor countries could benefit from America’s determination to prise open Europe’s cosseted farm sector. Also, the EU has proposed to let in imports from the poorest countries duty-free. But this should be taken with a pinch of salt, since any deal is likely to be hedged with exceptions. It is also probably a ploy to embarrass America. Washington wants to hang on to its discretionary system of duty-free access for poor countries, which is conditional on their human-rights record.

So poor countries are making progress of sorts. But Gandhi would not regard the rich countries’ response as particularly civilised.

The European Commission has announced sweeping changes, including the abolition of many tax-free perks, in an effort to restore public confidence in the disgraced body.

Future applicants for top posts in the executive arm of the European Union will be judged on merit, rather than nationality.

And senior officials will lose some of their tax-free privileges.

From the end of this month, Commissioners will no longer be able to buy cut-price alcohol, cigarettes and household goods in Brussels - a perk they have enjoyed for nearly 40 years.

Their senior staff will still benefit, but only for one year after their arrival.

The shake-up comes six months after the mass resignation of the previous Commission amid allegations of mismanagement and favouritism.

Biggest shake-up in history

Neil Kinnock, who is in charge of reforming the Commission, said the overhaul had to start at the top.

''This is the biggest single package of changes to the organisation of the Commission in the history of the institution,'' he added.

''Nationality will no longer be the determinant in appointing a new occupant to a specific post. “This” means an end to the convention of attaching national flags to senior positions.''

Promotion for women

The move comes less than two weeks after the new Commission, led by former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, took over the reins.

The BBC's Justin Webb in Brussels says the reforms are intended to send a clear signal that incompetence and fraud will no longer be tolerated.

The Commission said it would also shortly announce ways of promoting more women to senior management posts.