Beirut talks drag on as truce just holds

Press, 15 July 1982, Page 8

Beirut talks drag on as truce just holds

NZPA Beirut The latest Israeli-Pales-tinian cease-fire around Beirut looked increasingly fragile yesterday as Lebanese, Palestinian and American negotiators appeared to have run out of ideas on a Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. The cease-fire, the sixth since Israeli forces invaded Lebanon on June 6. was agreed to on Monday after a day of savage artillery duels in which at least 60 people were reported killed.

But there was little confidence' in Beirut that the lull would last long, and witnesses said that the Israelis were firing flares over the hills south-east of the capital. The talks on removing the Palestine Liberation Organisation from’Lebanon,.as demanded by Israel, have got nowhere since Syria announced at the week-end that

it could not- accommodate the guerrillas. No other feasible destination, has been proposed.

Lebanese and Palestinian leaders and Western diplomats soldiered on with meetings yesterday, but attention was focused on a projected trip to Washington by the Syrian and Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministers, Mr AbdelHalim Khaddam, and Prince Saud. There was confusion over the timing of the visit. Palestinian sources expected it in the next day or two but a State Department spokesman in Washington said that it might not take place for 10 of 15 days.

Politicians in Beirut believe that the Syrian-United States talks are the only way out of the impasse created by the Syrian refusal to accept the P.L.O. guerrillas, seen in Beirut as marking an opening gambit by Damascus to enter the talks.

Palestinian sources said that the former Lebanese Prime Minister. Saeb Salam was trying to persuade the American special envoy, Philip Habib, to meet the P.L.O, negotiator, Hani Hassan. But they were sceptical of the prospects of a meeting, which would be certain to raise a furor in Israel. Israel, meanwhile has said that it will give more time to American efforts to find a peaceful formula.

Earlier sources in Beirut said that the P.L.O. was angling for a formal United States recognition as the political price for abandoning Lebanon. Lebanon has been the P.L.O.’s base for the last 12 years.

The sources, said that the P.L.O.’s chairman, (Mr Yasser Arafat) would reverse his refusal to move his trapped guerrillas from west Beirut by the United States 6th fleet if Mr Reagan recognised the P.L.O,