Beirut Govt tightening security at airport

Press, 6 July 1985, Page 10

Beirut Govt tightening security at airport

NZPA-AP Beirut The Lebanese Government said yesterday that it would strengthen security at Beirut airport and protest at the United Nations against the United States effort to isolate the shellscarred facility from international traffic. Officials said President Amin Gemayel held crisis talks with top economic and military aides yesterday over the American threat to arrange a boycott of the airport because of the 17day T.W.A. hijack-hostage affair.

Mr Gemayel’s Administration ordered Rashid Fakhoury, Lebanon’s United Nations Ambassador, to protest against the United States campaign as unjustifiably hostile.

A Foreign Ministry statement said Mr Fakhoury would deliver a protest Note to the United Nations Secretariat in New York, to be distributed as an official document to the 15 members of the Security Council, but would not ask for a council meeting. Mr Gemayel met for three hours top Army and police commanders, the Defence Minister, Mr Adel Osseiran, the Interior Minister, Mr Joseph Skaff, and the Economy Minister, Mr Vic-

tor Kassir. Mr Skaff said Lebanon would seek the help of other Arab nations in coping with the American threat. It would build a fence around the airport and increase security against hijackings. A Government statement earlier said new airport restrictions included closing off all entrances to the two runways, refusing to allow gunmen inside the airport, and keeping cars away from the main terminal building. It said the measures were ordered by the Justice Minister, Mr Nabih Berri, and the Transport Minister, Mr Walid Jumblatt, whose militias control the area. Mr Berri’s Shi’ite Muslim militia, Amal, took control of most of the 39 American hijack hostages and negotiated their release. “We have set up earth mounds around the airport last night,”, said Khaled Saab, deputy director of the airport. “Cars are kept 200 metres from the terminal building.” The plan calls for reinforcing Lebanese Army and police units now assigned there to implement the new security procedures. Similar efforts in the past have had little result. Gunmen from Lebanon’s numerous militias, and sometimes hijackers, have ignored law

enforcement officials and wandered freely through the terminal and on to the runways. The Administration of President Ronald Reagan said on Monday that it had undertaken “legal action and diplomatic steps” to close the airport to international traffic as a result of the T.W.A.. hijacking. Britain has joined the call for a ban on flights to and from Beirut. In Strasbourg, France, West European Parliamentarians urged the 21 countries of the Council of Europe to take urgent action to combat terrorism and air piracy. Expressing outrage at the recent T.W.A. airliner hijacking and the reported explosion on an Air-India flight, which killed 329 people, the members of Parliament backed calls for a special task force to take “concrete and urgent action” to curb terrorism. European Justice Ministers have proposed a special anti-terrorism ministerial task force in the council. The members of Parliament unanimously called on Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, and Malta to ratify the 1977 European Convention on the suppression of terrorism, which is

in force between 15 Council of Europe States. They called for a new convention on terrorism and urged full implementation of the aviation security measures adopted by the European civil aviation conference last month. The families of four of the seven Americans kidnapped in west Beirut in the last 16 months have issued a televised appeal for their relatives to be freed “in the name of God”. The “Los Angeles Times” reports that the Reagan Administration is laying the groundwork for possible efforts to kidnap the Shi’ite hijackers of the T.W.A. jet if Lebanon does not extradite them. The newspaper, in a report from Washington, quoted an unidentified source as saying a United States team might one day “do an Eichmann” — a reference to a Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, who was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina and later tried and executed. The Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, said yesterday the United States might offer a reward for information leading to the capture of the hijackers, who killed a Navy diver during the hijacking.