WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rice is hinting that Syria will be invited to the upcoming Middle East peace conference at Annapolis, Md., in what would be a reversal of an American policy of isolating the Baathist government in Damascus.

In response to a question on ABC’s “This Week” about whether the State Department intended to invite the Syrians, Ms. Rice said it would be likely that, to follow up on a 2002 Saudi peace proposal, members of the Arab League committee would be invited to Annapolis. “Syria is a member of that committee,” she said. The Saudi offer is to exchange peace for Israel’s withdrawal from all the territory it won in the 1967 Six-Day War. “Now, in this case, the Israeli-Palestinian comprehensive peace, the Israeli-Palestinian track is the most mature,” she added. “It’s the one that’s moving forward. This meeting is about Israel and the Palestinians. But we understand that ultimately there has to be a comprehensive peace and there has to be progress on the other tracks as well.”

The likely invitation to Syria, a country American generals say has only recently slowed the supply of suicide bombers to Iraq, represents a reversal of policy in many ways. To start, the State Department until recently has attempted to isolate the Syrians, in part for their suspected role in assassinating independent politicians in Lebanon. The Bush administration has publicly blamed Syria for the 2005 assassination of then-Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, as have other anti-Syrian politicians such as Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has denied the charges.

An invitation to the Syrians to attend the meeting in Annapolis would be a victory for Ms. Rice and the State Department. Since the U.N.-brokered cease-fire that ended Israel’s war with Hezbollah in August 2006, the foreign service in particular has pressed to pry Syria away from its recent military, intelligence, and financial alliance with Iran.

The Bush administration until now has held off from embracing Syria for fear of rewarding its role in helping terrorists in Iraq and its intimidation campaign of political murder in Lebanon. The Israeli press reported earlier this year, for example, that Vice President Cheney urged Jerusalem to back off on its outreach to Damascus in 2006 to explore a possible agreement regarding the return of the Golan Heights, territory Israel won in 1967 in the Six Day War and has since annexed. Between 2004 and 2006, Israel’s foreign ministry sanctioned back channel talks with representatives of Mr. Assad, though the talks did not result in any formal channel.

The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday that an Israeli major general, Amos Yadlin, in a briefing of government ministers in Jerusalem, said American diplomats had promised “Syria that the issue of the country’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights will be discussed at the international Middle East peace conference scheduled to be held in Annapolis.”

Israel’s leadership has also said that it would support talks with Syria on the Golan. On November 6, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it would be “the right thing” for Syria to attend the Annapolis Summit. “I hope that if the process with the Palestinians succeeds, it will encourage a similar process with Syria,” he said at a press conference following a meeting with Israel’s president, Shimon Peres.

President al-Assad has said he would not send envoys to Annapolis unless the Americans promise the conference would address the wider Arab-Israeli conflict and not focus exclusively on the conflict between the Jewish State and the Palestinian Arabs. The Syrians have also threatened to host their own conference with Hamas to compete with the Annapolis one. A Hamas paramilitary leader, Khaled Mashal, who is wanted by the Israeli authorities, resides in Damascus with permission from the Assad government.

Secretary Rice has been careful to lower expectations for the Annapolis meeting, calling it a “launching pad,” and a pre-cursor to final status talks that may one day result in an independent Palestinian Arab state. The Israelis, for their part, now work closely with their negotiating partners, the Fatah Party government in the West Bank, in part to protect Fatah, which was Yasser Arafat’s branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization, from its rivals in Hamas. President Abbas dissolved his government in June following a Hamas coup in Gaza and Hamas’s seizure of the preventive security services.

Israeli hawks have long been divided over the Syrian track in the Arab-Israeli negotiations. Some have wanted the track to be active as a way of gaining advantage over the Palestinian Arabs with the threat of a separate peace with Syria similar to the peace deals Israel struck with Egypt and Jordan. Others warn that it would be a mistake for Israel to surrender the strategic Golan Heights under virtually any circumstances.

American conservatives have similar divisions, with most skeptical that Mr. al-Assad wants peace, but others hopeful that a Libya-like deal could be cut with Syria that would allow American war planners to focus on Iran.