Factions pose threat to Gemavel

Press, 3 August 1985, Page 10

Factions pose threat to Gemavel

NZPA-AP Beirut Two Christian militias opposed to Lebanon’s President Amin Gemayel are patching up their own enmities and may unite to drive the Maronite Catholic from office. A former President, Suleiman Franjieh, long a foe of the Gemayel family, said yesterday that he was forging an alliance with the Lebanese forces, whose gunmen were blamed for killing his son seven years ago.

a The Lebanese forces split with Mr Gemayel and his Phalange Partv in march. Mr Franjieh,'aged 75, was President when Lebanon’s civil war began in 1975 and is allied with Syria, which now is trying to stop it. He said yesterday of Mr Gemayel: “No solution can be expected in Lebanon until the sick head is cut off.” The agreement with the Lebanese forces should blossom within the next few

days or weeks, he said. Mr Franjieh commands a 5000strong force known as the Marada, or Giants. Elie Hobeika, commander of the Lebanese forces, met Mr Franjieh on Thursday. It was Mr Franjieh’s first meeting with leaders of the militia since the'massacre in June, 1978, of his son Tony, his daughter-in-law, Vera, and their infant daughter. Mr Franjieh sided after that with pro-Syrian Muslim

v factions in the civil war that has devastated Lebanon, paralysed the Government and left a political vacuum in which neighboring Syria has become the real source of power. That arrangement ended also, however. Mr Franjieh’s alliance with Druse militia leader, Walid Jumblatt, and Nabih Berri, chief of the Shi’ite militia Amal, fell apart last year at a Lebanese reconciliation conference in Lausanne, Switzerland.