Major’s militias in dispute

Press, 18 February 1983, Page 8

Major’s militias in dispute

NZPA-Reuter Jerusalem Israel hoped to iron out differences with Lebanon over the future role of Major Saad Haddad’s Christian militias when negotiators of both countries met today in the Israeli town of Netanya, officials said. They said that a confrontation between Israeli and Lebanese troops at a checkpoint outside Beirut yesterday was not expected to be discussed at today's sixteenth meeting of Israeli, Lebanese and American negotiators on the withdrawal of foreign forces. The Israeli-supported militias have been expanding their control in south Lebanon and Israel hopes to

persuade the Lebanese authorities to integrate them in the reconstituted National Army. Israeli officials repeated yesterday that a basic agreement on the integration of Major Haddad s militias had been reached with Lebanon. But the Lebanese again denied the assertion. The Israelis have often said that they will not abandon Major Haddad, who broke away from the Lebanese Regular Army some seven years ago and set up an independent force almost wholly trained and supplied by Israel. The question has been one of the knottier problems on the agenda of the negotiators, who have made little

progress at meetings held alternately in Israel and Lebanon. Major Haddad has moved his militiamen into the south Lebanese coastal town of Sidon and the important junction town of Nabatiyeh. saying the move was designed to reassert Lebanese sovereignty there. “It's not. a question of taking over more territory." he said yesterday in Jerusalem. "We all want to see Lebanon saved. If I am deployed in some place or another, it is a guarantee for the future." In Beirut the Lebanese Foreign Minister, Mr Elie Salem, announced that the Lebanese Army had orders to shoot anyone interfering

with its control of Greater Beirut and indicated the order included the Israeli Army if a conflict should arise.

“The Army has instructions to shoot, has instructions to act like an Army and not to negotiate with outlaws,” Mr Salem said. "Every force that will encounter the Army in the Greater Beirut area, whether it is formal or informal, is. in the context of Lebanese law, an outlaw.”

The announcement came in the wake of Wednesday’s expansion by the Army into east Beirut and its outskirts, held for eight years by Right-wing Christian militias.