Key Lebanese Militia Officials Debate Details of Peace Accord

Representatives of Lebanon’s three main militias Wednesday held Christmas Day peace talks on an accord to end 10 years of civil war.

State-run television said that representatives of the Shia Muslim Amal militia, the Progressive Socialist Party, a Druze group, and the Lebanese Forces, a Christian militia, met in Damascus to discuss details of a peace agreement.

With the help of Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam, the three militias were attempting to set a date for their leaders to sign the agreement in Damascus, the television report said. Some sources predicted the accord could be signed Saturday.

Khaddam apparently persuaded the three militias to agree on the peace plan Monday.

Ratification Expected

The ratification of the peace agreement would cap three months of Syrian-sponsored negotiations, which faltered twice over the issue of scrapping Lebanon’s 42-year-old system of political appointments based on religious lines.

No details of the arrangement were released, but the pact is expected to call for an immediate cease-fire and clear the way for substantial political reforms.

Meanwhile, in the Lebanese capital, the body of a kidnaped Lebanese Jew was found in West Beirut hours after a militant Muslim group claimed it had killed him, police announced Wednesday.

A police spokesman, who declined to be named in keeping with government rules, said the body of Chaim Cohen Halala was found early Tuesday morning. Halala had been shot three times in the head and body, the spokesman said. He did not explain why the official announcement of the discovery was withheld for more than 24 hours.

Kidnaped in March

Halala, 39, who had an Iranian passport, was kidnaped March 29 from his home in a former Jewish quarter of West Beirut.

In a statement published by Beirut’s independent newspaper An Nahar, a Muslim group calling itself the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth claimed that it killed him in retaliation for the shelling of Shia Muslim villages in southern Lebanon by the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army.

Police said five Muslims were killed and eight wounded last Sunday when the army shelled the villages of Yater and Kafra from Israel’s self-styled “security zone” above the Israeli border.

The Organization of the Oppressed on Earth said that it would kill three other Lebanese Jewish hostages if the shelling in Southern Lebanon did not stop.

3 Hostages Remain

The group identified the three Jewish hostages it holds as Isaac Sasson, 59, head of the Jewish community in Lebanon, Isaac Tarrab, 53, and Elie Srour, 68.

According to the Lebanese Interior Ministry, there were about 3,000 Jews living in Lebanon before Israel’s June, 1982, invasion. Now there are said to be fewer than 100.