MIDEAST . . . CLINTON EN ROUTE

President Clinton, seeking "a new opportunity" to ensure long-term peace, departed for Cairo today on a five-day tour of the Middle East. As he embarked with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, the president praised the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, but with comments directed at the last peace holdout, Syria. "This trip is more than a celebration of another important step toward peace; it's an opportunity to pursue new steps," Clinton said. Before attending the treaty signing near Amman, he'll meet Wednesday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. TIME Cairo bureau chief Dean Fischer says the two will most likely talk about ways to bring Israel and Syria closer to a peace agreement -- a meeting that matters, Fischer says, since Mubarak and Syrian President Hafez Assad are close. BTW: Despite public expressions of warmth between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein, several hundred Jordanians demonstrated against the treaty today in Amman. But Fischer, in the