Act on Premier’s Killers, Lebanese President Urged

Acting Lebanese Premier Salim Hoss demanded Sunday that President Amin Gemayel take action against the assassins of former Premier Rashid Karami or resign, but Gemayel refused to “succumb to blackmail.”

The exchange deepened the crisis that threatens to solidify the partition of Lebanon into Muslim and Christian mini-states. Hoss is a Sunni Muslim, as was Karami. Gemayel is a Maronite Christian.

Hoss said in a statement broadcast by state-run Beirut radio that Gemayel failed to say anything about the progress of investigations into Karami’s assassination a week ago.

“His silence is deafening,” the acting premier said. “We demand that the president take a historic stand like the Speaker of Parliament did.”

Parliament Speaker Hussein Husseini, a Shia Muslim, resigned Friday. He accused Gemayel of failing to punish right-wing Christian extremists, who Muslim leaders contend killed Karami.

“I will not succumb to blackmail or step down before the end of my constitutional term,” said Gemayel, whose term expires in September, 1988.

“The army is not and will not be a cover for criminals,” Gemayel declared in a speech at his hometown of Bikfaya, northeast of Beirut.

“The criminal will get his stern and just punishment, whoever he is. But the investigation should take its natural course, and I will not allow anyone to make the army a sacrificial lamb,” he added.

Karami, 65, was killed by an explosion aboard an army helicopter flying him from his summer home in northern Lebanon to Beirut last Monday.

Muslim leaders say the helicopter was rigged with explosives at Adma air base in Lebanon’s Christian heartland before it was sent to pick up Karami.

They contend that it was a plot by the right-wing Lebanese Forces, the nation’s main Christian militia, which opposed Karami’s pro-Syrian policy for reunifying Lebanon.