Washington calls on Begin to stop attacks in Lebanon

Press, 10 May 1979, Page 8

Washington calls on Begin to stop attacks in Lebanon

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States has called an Israel to stop the air strikes it has been launching this week against Palestinian camps in Lebanon.

“The continuing Israeli air strikes are contributing to an already dangerous situation. We are urging that those air strikes be stopped,” a State Department spokesman, Mr Hodding Carter, told reporters, “We understand fully that these raids are not occurring in isolation, that they are occurring against a backdrop of terrorist activities aimed at Israel, and that those attacks have taken innocent lives,” he said. Mr Carter said the spiral of violence was taking an unacceptable toll in human suffering and in the political stability of Lebanon. The Lebanese Prime Minister (Dr Selim Hoss), who has rejected the Israeli Offer of peace talks, blamed Israel for what he termed the Palestinian tragedy. In New York, the United Nations Security Council prepared to discuss the question of strengthening the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.

Three persons are reported to have been wounded in Lebanon on Tuesday when six Israeli planes raided a rural area near the coast about 40km north of the Israeli border.

A Western correspondent at the scene said the attack had destroyed an orange grove, and that Palestinian guerrilla bases in the area were untouched. The latest air raids began on Sunday when six persons died under a hail of bombs and rockets in a village in northern Lebanon.

Israel said the target had been a Palestinian ‘‘terrorist base”; Government officials

in Beirut said the victims were all Lebanese civilians who had been attending a wedding party. The official Lebanese National News Agency said the Israelis had used antipersonnel cluster-bombs in the latest raid. Israel used the Americanmade bombs, which scatter shrapnel grenades over a wide area, during its invasion of southern Lebanon last year. This was criticised by the United States as a contravention of the conditions under which they had been supplied. Mr Begin said on Tuesday that the air, naval, and artil-

lery attacks would continue until the guerrillas had been completely destroyed. Mr Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, has responded with an angry speech in which he pledged to continue fighting until an Arab flag was raised over Jerusalem.

Dr Hoss rejected a suggestion by Mr Begin that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon should be resettled in other Arab countries.

“Everyone knows that Israel is the cause of the Palestinians’ tragedy through their displacement from their land, he told reporters. “Any solution for this crisis which does not provide for a just solution Of the Palestinian people’s case through ensuring their legitimate national rights cannot serve as a proper middle East settlement.”