Captives dead: Druse chief

Press, 13 July 1984, Page 6

Captives dead: Druse chief

NZPA-Reuter Beirut All the Christians and Druse Muslims captured during fighting in the Chouf Mountains last September were killed, the Druse leader, Walid Jumblatt, said yesterday. About 3000 people have been reported missing by militia leaders in the last two years of factional fighting. Mr Jumblatt said that he had no information about those who had disappeared in Beirut. “As for the mountain, unfortunately they are all dead ... be it Druse or Christians. The war in the mountain was a merciless war,” he said. Mr Jumblatt, Minister of Transport and Public Works in Lebanon’s “national unity” Government, was speaking after the Cabinet had agreed to free hostages taken by rival Christian and

Muslim militias, but failed to' set a date for their release. After a three-hour Cabinet session the Prime Minister, Mr Rashid Karami, said that the hostages would be

freed "as soon as possible,” but left open the possibility that militias might continue to hold some prisoners. The new scheme authorises a committee of Ministers, Army officers; and security officials to investigate the numbers of hostages being kept and to publish lists of missing persons believed to have been abducted by militias. “This programme provides for releasing them all,” Mr Karami said. But if some hostages were still detained efforts would continue to gain their eventual release. About 250 relatives have held a sit-in at the office of a Sunni Muslim religious leader since suspending street protests on Tuesday after the President, Mr Amin Gemayel, promised to give the hostage issue priority at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.

As Mr Karami’s statement was read out, one of the relatives shouted, “This is lies. Back to the museum.” Some protesters then briefly cut the “museum crossing,” one of four east-west crossingpoints they had blocked over the week-end.

Protesters occupied a television station for 35 minutes yesterday and left only after they had broadcast their demands.

The relatives, who had earlier blocked access roads to the airport and port, demand the release of all hostages and information about those who have disappeared.

Mr Karami said that the Cabinet still had not considered a plan to disengage combatants in the mountains above Beirut, although the security plan for Beirut was “proceeding normally.”