Libyan hand in revolt

Press, 26 May 1983, Page 8

Libyan hand in revolt

NZPA Damascus The central committee of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Palestinian guerrilla group met in Damascus yesterday to discuss how to deal with rebel officers opposed to his moderate policies.

Palestinian sources said that the committee would decide on action against the rebels to be approved by the guerrilla group’s revolutionary council in a few days. The rebellion, so far peaceful, is led by Abu Musa in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, where Palestinian forces are lined up with Syrian troops. The rebels include five senior Fatah officers and an unknown number of Palestinian guerrillas.

Moderate Palestinian sources say that the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar

Gadaffi, instigated the revolt and is financing the rebels. Libya has neither confirmed nor denied that but has left no doubt it supports the rebellion, at least in spirit. Mr Arafat returned to Damascus earlier yesterday after visiting his men in north and east Lebanon. He accused Libya of orchestrating mutiny in guerrilla ranks, and some of his troops said that Syria was playing a role in the revolt, too. The mutineers numbered about 150 officers and men, including members of the P.L.O. renegade Abu Nidal group, and “the Libyans,” he said. “Now, the head of this problem is Gadaffi,” Mr Arafat said.

Neither he nor his military deputy, Abu Jihad, would say whether they thought Syria also had a part in the mutiny. But during a meeting after the news conference about a dozen P.L.O. officers and men indicated there was little question that Syria was playing at least a passive role. One young P.L.O. officer asserted that the rebels had been armed with heavy weapons flown in from Libya in the last few days. Asked where the Libyan transport planes had landed, he replied, “Damascus airport.”

The weapons were then presumably shipped overland through Syrian territory across the Lebanese border a few kilometres from there.