Syria Removes Missiles From Lebanon Again

Syria has moved its mobile anti-aircraft missiles out of Lebanon, where they were deployed last month, back into Syrian territory, U.S. officials said Saturday.

But the action apparently will not defuse a tense confrontation between Israel and Syria because the missiles can cover almost exactly the same airspace from their new positions as they did from the old ones.

An Administration official with access to information from reconnaissance satellites said the missiles apparently were moved Friday.

“The assessment now is that the (Soviet-made) SAM-6s and SAM-8s are back inside Syria,” the official said. “But they were only a few miles inside Lebanon in the first place.”

Confirmation by Israel

Israel’s state-owned radio and television stations confirmed the removal of the missiles, which had provoked sharp protests from Israel. Israel radio said the Syrians had withdrawn and then redeployed the missiles several times in the last two weeks, and the broadcast suggested that the latest withdrawal may be a brief one.

In a public statement Dec. 16, the United States urged both Syria and Israel to exercise restraint in the tense area.

U.S. officials said Saturday that it was the second time that Syria has shuttled the truck-mounted weapons forward and back across the Lebanese-Syrian frontier in the Bekaa Valley since Israeli warplanes shot down two Syrian MIG-23 jets in mid-November. The missiles were deployed in Lebanon in November, then removed a week or so later. They were returned to Lebanon in mid-December and remained there until they were again withdrawn Friday.

Israel considers the missiles, along with longer-range SAM-2 missiles deployed on the Syrian side of the border, to be a threat to Israeli reconnaissance flights over Lebanon. Israeli officials have hinted privately that the Jerusalem government might decide to bomb the missile sites.

A U.S. official said that Israel has shifted its reconnaissance flights to the west to avoid the 27-mile range of the SAM-2s, which have remained in Syria.

Israeli military sources said that the movement of the missiles makes very little strategic difference because they had been deployed very close to the Lebanese side of the border and are now very close to the Syrian side.

Syrian troops control the Lebanese side of the Bekaa Valley, so there are no impediments to moving the weapons from one side of the border to the other.