Syrians effect swift peace in Beirut

Press, 24 February 1987, Page 10

Syrians effect swift peace in Beirut

NZPA-Reuter Beirut

Syrian troops and tanks brought a swift halt yesterday to six days of savage militia fighting for control of west Beirut, and one of Damascus’ top soldiers in the Lebanese capital declared that the rule of street bosses was over.

Thousands of Syrian troops fanned out through the militia jungle of Beirut’s Muslim quarter. Some of the gunmen involved in the battles that killed 200 people and wounded 500 abandoned their positions and melted away. Political sources said more than 5000 Syrian troops, backed by artillery and at least 60 tanks, spent the night in parks, stadiums and army barracks, after grinding over steep mountain roads from eastern Lebanon.

As the troops prepared to consolidate their positions and crush any new outbreaks of gun law, criticism of Syria’s latest intervention in Lebanon came from Israel, the United States, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and Right-wing Lebanese Christians. Tanks secured Beirut airport as trucks packed with chanting troops roared into town watched by residents still numbed by the militia fighting. "With our souls and blood, we serve you, Lebanon,” chanted about 600 soldiers in 30 trucks as they roared along the seafront boulevard. Shi’ite Muslim Amal militiamen welcomed the Syrians with enthusiasm. Their Druse and Leftist rivals quietly abandoned combat positions after Syria’s military intelligence chief in Lebanon, Brigadier Ghazi Kanaan, ordered gunmen off the streets. “Militiamen will disappear, all militia

offices will be closed down. The reign of street bosses is over,” Brigadier Kanaan told Lebanese television.

He was in charge of 400 Syrian commandoes sent to west Beirut last July in a failed attempt to stop militia anarchy and kidnapping. At least 27 foreigners, including the British church envoy, Terry Waite, are missing, apparently held hostage, in Lebanon. Political sources in Beirut said the latest Syrian task force had been boosted to 5000 from 4000 troops and its deployment speeded up to halt a wave of tit-for-tat kidnappings by. the warring militias.

An Amal militia source said the Syrians would occupy main Shi’ite militia strongholds in west Beirut today, including a 40-storey block held by Amal and a pro-Iranian Hizbollah base said to have been used as a prison for foreign hostages. Brigadier Kanaan said Syrians would help Lebanese Army troops control west Beirut, Palestinian refugee camps and sprawling Shi’ite suburbs, as well as the airport and roads to the south and east.

Lebanese troops would deploy on the Green Line battlefront dividing west Beirut from the Christian east.

The Christian President, Amin Gemayel, has denounced the Syrian move — which was requested by Lebanese Muslim leaders — as illegal. In Washington, the State Department said no external force could restore order in Lebanon and urged all foreign troops to withdraw. The Israeli Defence Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, said Israel, which has hundreds of troops in south Lebanon, would

weigh its response carefully. The Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, said the Syrians were trying to “deepen ... their occupation of Lebanon against the legitimate position of Gemayel." The P.L.O. said Syria’s intervention violated Lebanon’s sovereignty and endangered Palestinian refugees in Beirut camps besieged by Amal since October 29. In a statement issued in Tunis, the P.L.O. said Arab or United Nations forces should be sent to protect the camps. The Amal chief, Nabih Berri, and Druse leader, Walid Jumblatt, whose militias fought all last week, held talks in Damascus yesterday with the Syrian Vice-President, Abdel-Halim Khaddam. Mr Jumblatt had said earlier in Damascus that he was ready to hand all his militia’s weapons to Syria.

He said he would return to Lebanon today to order his men to surrender their arms. Palestinians opposed to the P.L.O. leader, Yasser Arafat, should be allowed to keep their weapons, he added. Amal’s repeated Syrianbacked campaigns against Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon refugee camps have been a cause of friction between the Shi’ite and Druse-led militias.

At the battered Shatila camp in southern Beirut, a Canadian surgeon said some starving refugees had emerged from shelters as Syrian tanks rolled past a few hundred metres away. “(Hunger) cramps in their stomachs tell them they have to be happy about this Syrian deployment,” Dr Chris Giannou, told Reuters by radio. . The camp’s last supplies of cracked wheat were given to children aged under 12 yesterday, he. added.