Karami reveals Tripoli peace plans

Press, 28 August 1984, Page 6

Karami reveals Tripoli peace plans

NZPA-Reuter Tripoli Lebanese troops are to deploy within days to end militia clashes in the northern port of Tripoli under a peace plan unveiled yesterday by the Prime Minister, Mr Rashid Karami. Battles in Tripoli between the Sunni Muslim fundamentalist “Islamic Unification Movement” and the pro-Syrian Arab Democratic Party have killed 115 people and wounded about 300 in the last week. Syria, whose Army controls most of north Lebanon, appears to be throwing its weight behind the latest plan. Mr Karami said Syrian troops would support the Army if need be. A Syrian Intelligence officer, Major Muhammed al-Shaar, will join an all-party team appointed to implement the plan. Mr Karami said a broadly-based security committee had agreed to a firm cease-fire, the withdrawal of gunmen and a general reconciliation. The A.D.P. sent no delegate to the committee but indicated it would accept any decision the Prime Minister made. Mr Karami said the Army would separate the combatants on the frontlines before deploying throughout the city. The anti-Syrian Tawheed, the biggest militia in Tripoli, was allied to guerrilla factions loyal to the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, until he was driven from the city last year by Syrian-backed Palestinian rebels. In Beirut, fighting erupted on the old “Green Line” between the city’s Christian and Muslim sectors for the first time since a Government peace plan took hold last month. Army and police sources said four soldiers and three civilians were wounded in small-arms and rocket exchanges that began on the Fuad Chehab Flyover, a main east-west crossing. Christian troops stationed at the eastern end of the flyover traded fire with Muslim soldiers at the western end, a Druse Muslim radio station quoted security sources as saying. The fighting forced two other crossing points in central Beirut to close and gunmen took to the streets in defiance of the security plan, which outlawed all militia appearances. Separate Muslim and Christian brigades replaced militias on the “Green Line” in early July, but plans to integrate them into fully mixed units have made little, headway.