Israel and the United States will need to watch closely for possible changes in Syrian security policies and negotiating positions.

Some of today's comments may very well have been a Republican attempt to stake out negotiating positions before that first session.

These diplomats said the meeting was all along intended as a forum for parties to present negotiating positions, not to fully resolve differences.

Shirley's approach served to harden negotiating positions and bogged the commission's work down in minutiae.

What he represented was that these were negotiating positions and that they would have to be approved.

The Government official said those conditions were clearly impossible and were a restatement of negotiating positions that had already been rejected.

Shamir says he doesn't want to give away negotiating positions in advance.

The company's tendency to go public with negotiating positions led to further entrenchment on both sides, and no talks were scheduled for most of January.

It would be unfortunate to lock ourselves into negotiating positions now.

The Commission is ready to process negotiating positions in the various chapters once benchmarks are met.