Clash With Druze Blacks Out Beirut TV

Lebanese state television was forced off the air Wednesday night by fighting between government troops guarding its West Beirut studios and Druze militiamen, security sources said.

Four people were reported hurt in the clash between the soldiers of the weak national army and the Druze Progressive Socialist Party militia.

The television station, in a residential area of Beirut’s Muslim sector, stopped broadcasting after dark as gunfire crackled and rocket-propelled grenades exploded nearby.

The sources said the battle lasted about 90 minutes and that scattered shooting was heard for several hours until a West Beirut security committee persuaded the fighters to withdraw.

Witnesses said the violence erupted after troops demanded that Druze militiamen remove a large flag they had hoisted at a nearby militia office. Four of the rocket grenades hit the television studios, forcing staffers to take refuge in basements.

The fighting came after the Druze militia’s radio announced that no celebrations of Lebanon’s independence day would take place Friday in the Druze-controlled Shouf Mountains near Beirut.

Progressive Socialist Party leader and government minister Walid Jumblatt recently banned the national flag and anthem from Druze areas.

Meanwhile, Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite sought a meeting Wednesday with the fundamentalist Muslim kidnapers of American and French hostages, and a U.S. official was quoted as saying that their fate might be decided in the next few days.

Waite, special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, vanished and was allegedly hiding in a secret place somewhere in Lebanon, where he hopes the kidnapers will contact him.

He returned Tuesday to Beirut after holding 48 hours of talks in London with U.S. and British officials and with French officials in Paris.

Waite launched his mission last week, after four of six American hostages wrote to Runcie and to President Reagan, asking their help. Waite was reported to have met with the kidnapers on his first visit.

On Wednesday, the Beirut news media honored Waite’s request that he be left alone while attempting to meet with the Islamic fundamentalists--apparently the amorphous terrorist group that makes its claims under the name “Islamic Jihad” (Islamic Holy War).

The New York Times reported from Washington that senior Reagan Administration officials expressed confidence that the United States is now in contact with the Americans’ real captors.

The officials also said the fate of the hostages might be decided in the next few days. “We think it all may gel in a few days,” one aide was quoted as saying.

But he added that Washington does not know whether there will be a breakthrough or whether the captors might take some drastic action.

In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross said that two of its delegates were kidnaped Wednesday while traveling in southern Lebanon.

A spokeswoman said the two are Swiss nationals, Daniel Petitmermet and Pierre Wettach.