Lebanese Speaker seeks new leader

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34127, 13 April 1976, Page 21

Lebanese Speaker seeks new leader

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) BEIRUT, April 12. The Lebanese Parliamentary Speaker (Mr Kamel Al-Assad) has today begun a search for a new Head of State by sounding out the views of all the country’s disparate political factions. Left-wing leaders have extended their 10-day truce, until the end of the month to enable the election of a new President, but have coupled this with a demand for all Syrian forces to withdraw from the country.

President Franjieh, who for months has fought off Leftist pressure for his resignation, has not yet indicated that he will step down, but there is a growing belief that he will do so in view of the unanimous vote in Parliament on Saturday to change the Constitution so that a President can be replaced in mid-term.

Syria, while agreeing that President Franjieh must go, has been concerned about ensuring an orderly succession. Several thousand Syrian troops have entered Lebanon, many in the guise of

Palestinian Commandos, and just before the Parliamentary session on Saturday, more than 40 Syrian tanks were deployed on Lebanese soil around the frontier post on the main Damascus-Beirut highway. A Left-wing statement issued last night demanded that the Syrians must leave, denied that there was a military or political vacuum in the country, and said that Lebanon was perfectly capable of handling its own security. The delicate process of selecting a new President, who, under Lebanon's traditional share-out of top offices, must be a Maronite Christian, could well take more than a week. The new man will be faced with the problem of averting another full-scale eruption of civil war by reconciling the Right-wing Maronite Christians with Leftist and Moslem demands for political reform. The two leading candidates, the veteran politician,

Mr Raymond Edde, and the Central Bank Governor, Mr Elias Sarkis, are both strong-willed men who are unlikely to bow easily to political pressures. Parliament might, therefore, prefer to elect a lesserknown, untested man in the hope that he would be more amenable to factional demands, and to Syria. Fighting has continued in several parts of the country, despite the truce, and police sources say that 35 bodies were found yesterday in Beirut and its suburbs. Body snatcher A Woman thief snatched a shopping bag from a car in a parking lot in Canberra then fainted after emptying the contents onto the table of a nearby cafe. Inside the bag was the body of a cat that had been run over minutes earlier by the carowner, who planned to take it home and bury it. — Canberra.