Arab leaders try to end Lebanon war

Press, 18 October 1976, Page 9

Arab leaders try to end Lebanon war

NZPA-Reuter Riyadh, Lebanon Saudi and Kuwaiti leaders talked into the early hours yesterday with the Palestinian leader, Mr Yasser Arafat, and the Lebanese President, Mr Sarkis, in search of ways to end the Lebanese civil war.

But as Riyadh Radio reported Mr Arafat’s meeting with Crown Prince Fahd and the Kuwaiti ruler, Sheikh Sabah Ai-Salim Al-Sabah, the Palestinian news agency Wafa said from Beirut that Syrian troops were pouring shells and rockets on to Palestinian commando positions.

The report of the shelling came only a few hours after the Syrian President, Mr AlAssad, arrived for the sixsided summit with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Lebanon and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. As he stepped from his plane at Riyadh Airport he told King Khalid of Saudi Arabia that he had agreed to his request for a Syrian ceasefire.

Prince Fahd and Sheikh Sabah held a series of separ-

ate meetings with the visiting Heads of State, conferring first with President Assad and then President Sadat. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait want to heal the rift between Egypt and Syria, which in itself might help end the war in Lebanon, which has become a battlefield for rival Arab administrations to act out their hostilities to each other. Prince Fahd later had a meeting with the Lebanese President Mr Sarkis. Earlier Riyadh Radio quoted the official Saudi Press Agency as saying Presidents Assad and Sadat were expected to meet on Saturday night, but by 2 a.m. there was still no word that such a meeting had taken place. The two leaders, who were close allies in the 1973 war against Israel, fell out over Egypt’s signature of the Sinai Agreement with Israel last year, a move which Syria saw as taking Egypt out of the front line against the Jewish State.

Until they met at an informal gathering of the six leaders on Saturday they had not seen each other since the funeral of King Faisal in Riyadh 19 months ago.