ARABS DISPLAY UNITY AT SUMMIT : MUBARAK INSISTS NATIONS MUST `STRUGGLE FOR PEACE'.

Byline: Douglas Jehl The New York Times

Twenty-one Arab leaders gathered here Saturday in a show of alarm and an attempt at deterrence aimed at the early direction taken by Israel's conservative new government.

The Arab summit meeting was the first in six years, and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt said he hoped that the display of unity would help to guard against attempts to stray from the path toward peace in the Middle East.

``None of us wishes to return to war and destruction, nor seek to revert to the state of no war, no peace,'' Mubarak said in an opening address. ``We are sincerely prepared to struggle for peace until the end. We are prepared to face its challenges and aftermath, as long as the other party agrees on this course.''

The unmistakable target of his remarks and of the gathering itself was Benjamin Netanyahu, whose election as Israel's prime minister three weeks ago galvanized a divided Arab world into Saturday's show of collective will.

Mubarak was careful to avoid any hint of a threat, and as the Arab leaders closed the doors to their meeting to continue what will be two days of private talks, Egyptian officials said they were taking pains to ensure that the unusual gathering not end on a bellicose note.

But in what is expected to be a preview of the leaders' final communique, the Egyptian president issued a clear challenge to Israeli policy guidelines that have suggested that Netanyahu's government will be unwilling to withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, or to permit the Palestinians to establish an independent state.

``If any party allows itself to choose what to negotiate or what not, then this means that the other parties have the same right, which thus reverts the peace process to the zero point - or, rather, totally destroys it,'' Mubarak said.

Saturday's gathering brought together leaders who have long been at odds, including President Hafez al-Assad of Syria and King Hussein of Jordan, and the session recorded by television cameras Saturday presented at least a facade of Arab solidarity not seen since the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

Among the 22 members of the Arab League, only Iraq - still ostracized for its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 - was absent. Those gathered at a single table, in business suits and traditional Arab attire, included figures as diverse as Crown Prince Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah of Kuwait and the Libyan leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, who flew to Cairo in a Libyan Airlines jet in open defiance of U.N. sanctions.

In an earlier reunion, Mubarak even embraced President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, whom he has blamed for an assassination attempt against him in June 1995. And with Mubarak as a broker, Assad and King Hussein met privately for the first time in two years in a session that included an open airing of divisive issues including Jordan's accusations about Syrian support for terrorism.

But Saturday's dynamics were anything but straightforward, with the participants facing pressure from Syria and Lebanon, who want Arabs to rethink their ties with Israel, from Israel and the United States, who have warned that too tough an Arab stand could prove counterproductive, and from their own rivalries.