Lebanon is much calmer

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33966, 6 October 1975, Page 15

Lebanon is much calmer

.N Z P A.-Reuter —Copyright >

BEIRUT. October 5. Moslem and Christian leaders in

ebanon have appealed to their foloxvers to join hands in planning a better uture for the country alter six months of factional fighting in which more than 1350 people were killed and 3000 injured.

Beirut Radio said today that the city had a quiet night but there were a few shooting incidents.

Lebanon has been relatively calm for the last few days, the latest cease-fire agreement apparently holding. But the situation was marred yesterday by an attack by four Arab gunmen at Beirut airport. One of them, a Palestinian, was killed, as was a Lebanese Army corporal. A military investigating magistrate said last night that the three surviving gunmen — an Egyptian, a Syrian and a Lebanese — admitted that they planned to hijack

an Egyptian airliner to trv force Egypt to renounce it ■ recent disengagement accord with Israel. According to the magistrate. the gunmen planned to blow up the plane and its passengers if Cairo refused .their demands, which also in eluded the restoration of normal relations with the Pales tine Liberation Organisation (P.L.0.).

Relations between Egypt and the P.L.O. deteriorated last month after bitter Palestinian criticism of the Sinai agreement.

The P.L.O. said that the gunmen infiltrated the com niando movement recentb with the aim of discrediting it, and demanded that it should take part in question ing the three survivors — al! ■of whom were injured during the airport operation

Meanwhile, as the State !run Beirut Radio expressed the hope that the country was heading for “total relaxa tion." Christian and Moslem spiritual leaders called for efforts to preserve Lebanon’"unique formula of coexitence.”

Sheikh Hassan Khaled, mufti of Lebanon, said in a speech that he hoped the three-day Moslem feast of Eid al-Fitr which starts todav would mark "the end of the black days through which Lebanon has passed.” Eid al-Fitr signals the end of the month-long Ramadan fast.

Similar calls for solidarity came from the Maronite Christian patriarch. Antonios Khreish, and President Suleiman Franjieh of Lebanon.