A Good Maiden Voyage

HE CAME, HE SAW, HE CUT A DEAL. PREVIEWED AS numbingly routine and preliminary, Warren Christopher's first trip to the Middle East as Secretary of State actually succeeded on many levels. On the most important one, he managed to jump-start the Middle East peace process, stalled since December when Israel deported 415 Palestinians suspected of membership in the radical group Hamas.

On Friday, Christopher and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, as co- sponsors, announced that they would soon invite the parties to a ninth round of talks in April. Israel and the Arab countries had been eager to resume anyway, but were further attracted by Christopher's promise to thrust the U.S. more deeply into the negotiations. The Palestinian negotiators felt similarly but have been losing popularity to Hamas; they held out for a face- saving Israeli concession. Christopher pressed Jerusalem to return the deportees faster and improve conditions in the occupied territories. Now if the Palestinians don't show up in April, says a U.S. official, "that's their problem."