DAMASCUS, May 26 (AFP) - Syria gave strong backing Wednesday to mounting calls for an urgent meeting of Arab leaders to coordinate policy towards the new Israeli government being formed by Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak. "The latest developments more than ever require us to adopt a united Arab position ... to enable us to deal with the new (Israeli) government," the ruling party daily Al-Baath said. The paper urged Arab governments to focus their demands of the new Israeli government on the long-frozen Syrian and Lebanese tracks of the peace process and call Barak's bluff over his campaign pledges to relaunch talks with Damascus and end Israel's 21-year occupation of south Lebanon within a year. Arab leaders should "test the intentions of the new government first on the resumption of peace negotiations where they left off and then on its plans for a withdrawal for Lebanon in order to make sure they're not just a manoeuvre or a bid to separate the Syrian and Lebanese tracks," the paper said. Syria insists it will only resume talks with Israel where it says they left off in February 1996 -- with an Israeli pledge to withdraw from the Golan Heights captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Beirut and Damascus have refused to cooperate with any Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon which is not part of a wider peace deal with Syria. "In any event the Arab side should adopt a position which is solid and united enough to secure greater international support and protect against all eventualities," Al-Baath said. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Sunday that consultations were underway for a five-way summit of Israel's Arab neighbours. But he gave a limited assessment of the purposes of a frontline summit. "Such a summit would not necessarily impose conditions or issue ultimatums but would simply confirm the Arab position and the peace strategy adopted by Arab leaders at their (June 1996) Cairo summit," Mubarak said. The Cairo summit held following the election of right-wing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was ousted in last week's polls, linked normalization of relations with Israel to progress in the peace process, but its decisions were never implemented. There has been mounting pressure on Damascus in recent days to end the long estrangement from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and host a meeting with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad to pave the way for a wider Arab summit.  