Karami asks Israel to close office

Press, 4 June 1984, Page 8

Karami asks Israel to close office

NZPA-Reuter Beirut The Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr Rashid Karami, has confirmed that he has asked Israel to close its liaison office in Christianheld territory north of Beirut. Beirut Radio said it was the Government’s first public confirmation that it had officially asked the Israelis to leave the office in Dbaiyeh, 9.6 km from the capital. Israeli officials have denied receiving such a request. Israel’s co-ordinator in Lebanon, Uri Lubrani, said Beirut had to let the office stay open if it wanted to negotiate the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied south. The radio quoted Mr Karami as saying at a dinner in Beirut at the weekend that he had done it as a duty to the resistance against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. It did not say when or how he had put the request or whether he had put a date on the bureau’s closing. Mr Karami, it said, looked on the Dbaiyeh office as having lost its legitimacy, anyway, when the Lebanese Government abrogated the troop withdrawal agreement it had signed with Israel under American auspices in May last year.

The bureau’s main functions since the abrogation in March have been issuing permits for people to visit the occupied south and coordinating with Pro-Israeli members of the Right-wing Christian militia alliance known as the Lebanese Forces. The treaty’s abrogation marked a sudden shift in the policy of President Amin Gemayel away from the United States and towards Syria, the patron of his former opponents. Mr Karami, who took office with Syria’s approval, praised the guerrilla resistance to Israeli rule in the south yesterday saying it was carrying out its duty “in defending our homeland, our values and our future.” Mr Karami’s Government

programme, announced in Parliament on Thursday, made ending the occupation the priority. It offered Israel security guarantees, including a promise that the Lebanese Army would stop infiltration into northern Israel. The Lebanese Forces alliance has denounced Mr Karami’s programme as heretical, especially his plan to rebuild the fragmented Army into a force able to take control in the south. The Lebanese Forces commander, Fadi Frem, said he wanted “security decentralisation,” with each main seat responsible for

security in the area where it predominates. Fighting broke out at the week-end after the Christian militia made a statement denouncing Mr Karami’s policies and pledging to keep up its political and military opposition. Army sources said proChristian troops skirmished with Druse Muslims in the mountains south-east of Beirut, and a Christian radio station said four people were wounded when a shell hit a Christian suburb. The statement brought a swift response from the Muslim militia • leader, Nabih Berri. He said the danger to the Government now came from “divisive stands which are becoming clear.”