Pull Out 6th Fleet, Berri Demands : He Adds New Condition for Freedom of Hostages; U.S. Rejection Is Swift

Shia Muslim leader Nabih Berri demanded Monday that the United States withdraw the warships of the Navy’s 6th Fleet from the Lebanese coast as a condition for the release of the 40 Americans held in Lebanon.

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and other U.S. officials quickly rejected the new demand, making clear their effort to leave all options open in the crisis. Weinberger characterized the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 as “the beginning of a war.”

“The U.S. fleet is in international waters. It’s not in Lebanese waters,” Weinberger said. “It is important to have the American presence there for whatever may be required of it.”

Berri’s demand added a new wrinkle to the efforts to win the release of the hostages who were aboard the TWA flight when it was hijacked June 14, as well as the freedom of seven Americans kidnaped earlier in Lebanon.

Amal’s Own Demand

It represented the first time that Amal, Berri’s 6,000-member militia, had added its own demand to that of the hijackers who have sought the release of more than 700 Lebanese detainees held by Israel.

“The advance of the 6th Fleet towards our shores forces us to add one more condition--this time for the Amal movement--and that is the withdrawal of the 6th Fleet from our coast,” Berri told reporters.

The ships now stationed off Lebanon are part of the fleet of about 25 vessels maintained in the Mediterranean by the United States. They headed quickly toward the eastern Mediterranean shortly after the crisis began, and some have operated close enough to the coast to be seen from the shore on occasion.

The fleet offers the United States a range of military options--from air strikes by F-14 Tomcat jets flying from the aircraft carrier Nimitz to the landing of troops, either from helicopters or ships. About 1,800 Marines are aboard the vessels, a Pentagon official said.

The F-14s have been photographed in maneuvers over the Mediterranean in recent days, but the Pentagon has insisted that they have not flown over Lebanon.

Although President Reagan said Sunday that the United States has no plan to use force to resolve the crisis, Weinberger called the hijacking “the beginning of a war” in an interview Monday with four network television correspondents. “That’s why these various military movements that we think are important to make--to be ready to do anything that may be decided to be done--have to be made and why they should be treated as military movements in wartime.”

But the defense secretary also said that the United States is “not interested in revenge” for the murder of a U.S. sailor in the hijacking and indicated that Washington will be cautious about taking any military action.

Killing of Innocents

“If you just send in a lot of planes to bomb indiscriminately (those) areas where you think you might hurt people who may have done something with the hijacking, you are going to hurt and kill a lot of innocent people,” he said.

Weinberger declined to call Berri a terrorist, but he pointed out that the Amal leader “had contact with the terrorists and is speaking for them.”

The Pentagon chief, referring to “virtually an anarchical situation,” said about 40 groups--each with its own armed unit--are operating in and around Beirut, complicating efforts by intelligence operatives to anticipate the myriad military operations that take place from day to day.

Meanwhile, there were these developments among American and Lebanese leaders Monday:

--The White House, in its first public indication that Reagan was shifting his schedule as a result of the crisis, announced that the President would abandon his plans to take a 10-day vacation at his ranch near Santa Barbara beginning Friday. Instead, he will monitor the developments in the Middle East from Washington, although a trip to Chicago on Friday remains on his schedule.

--Reagan met for 90 minutes with his senior national security advisers for a report on the situation in Lebanon.

--Israel released 26 Shia and five Sunni Muslims out of the 766 prisoners who were captured in southern Lebanon and moved to an Israeli prison. Berri, who has claimed responsibility for most of the 40 American hijacking hostages, has said the hijackers want all the Israeli-held prisoners released.

--Akef Haidar, Amal’s chief political official, said Amal will not kill the hostages but that any effort directed by Reagan to free the hostages by force will result in their deaths. “If he shells the area, he’ll kill them before he kills us,” Haidar was quoted as saying.

Military experts scoffed at Berri’s demand for a withdrawal of the U.S. fleet, saying that jets from the Nimitz can be effective--and reach Lebanon within minutes--even if the ship is 100 miles or more off Lebanon.

Out of Air Traffic

Such a distance is preferred for aircraft carrier operations to keep the military jets out of civilian air traffic corridors near shore, they said.

“An aircraft carrier doesn’t have to be right up on the coast to pose a threat,” said one Pentagon official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified by name.

And one congressional source said “the only reason to approach within three miles is to be seen” or to shell locations ashore. But Frederick W. Axelgard, a Middle East expert at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointed out, “Whatever they would attempt to do is not going to be a frontal assault.”

In any case, moving the ships close to the Lebanese beaches could put them within range of shore-based guns while serving little immediate military purpose.

“You can’t just simply blindly go in and shell something, unless you know what you’re hitting,” said a senior Pentagon official, pointing out the dangers to the hostages because their precise locations are not known.

Axelgard called the Amal leader’s demand for the removal of the U.S. ships “another means for Berri to distance himself from the United States in the eyes of the extremists.”

Axelgard said the demand “might give him some time and credibility (with the more radical Shias) with which to work.”