Warring factions agree to Beirut cease-fire

Press, 11 April 1984, Page 10

Warring factions agree to Beirut cease-fire

NZPA-Reuter Beirut Lebanon’s warring groups have given final endorsement to a plan for disengagement of forces along the Beirut confrontation lines. The plan was endorsed at a meeting of a “higher security committee” of senior officials from the belligerent groups, chaired by the President, Mr Amin Gemayel yesterday. Sporadic day-long clashes along the “green line” dividing east and west Beirut had continued as the committee, which was set up at last month’s inconclusive peace conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, approved the plan. The political-military committee included senior delegates from the Rightwing Christian Falangist Party and the four main fighting forces — the Army,

the Christian Lebanese Forces militia, and the Druse and Shi’ite Muslim militias. The committee’s decision endorsed the work of a subcommittee of military representatives of the rival fighting forces that drafted the disengagement plan. Announcing the final agreement at the Presidential Palace, a spokesman, Munif Oweidat, said that the military subcommittee would oversee the disengagement process. The plan would place a force of 2000 to 30000 Lebanese policemen along the front and require the combatants to withdraw to new lines just out of sight of one another. No date has been set for the change, but the Army command has ordered reserve officers to report in three days for duty as cease-fire observers.

A French Embassy spokesman said that France might provide extra observers if asked officially by the Lebanese Government. Forty Frenchmen are already on duty at the only crossing-point between the two halves of the divided capital. The rival forces fought sporadically along the “green line” yesterday and security forces reported clashes at most sectors of the front, which stretches from Beirut port to the mountain town of Souk elGharb, 15km to the southeast. The disengagement plan raised no gfeat hopes among the Lebanese. “L’Orient-Le Jour,” a French-language Beirut newspaper, described it as “a game of hide-and-seek, a web of expedients that does not amount to a true separation of forces.”