As Lebanon’s Interim Premier, Aoun Is Not Afraid to Speak Out

For many years, the symbol of Christian power in Lebanon was the boxy presidential palace located in the rolling hills of Baabda, a suburb near Beirut and so close to the demarcation line separating Muslim from Christian areas that it frequently became the target of gunners unhappy with the current occupant.

Until last month, the legal resident of the Baabda palace was President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Catholic who was frequently seen on the nightly news dressed in immaculate French suits--he is partial to white--consulting with political leaders.

Gemayel’s six-year term expired Sept. 23, but Parliament was unable to decide on a replacement. So Gemayel appointed the commander of the Lebanese army, Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, as premier, and he appointed a new Cabinet.

The appointment of Aoun set off howls of protest from the Muslim quarters of the country, in large measure because a Sunni Muslim has traditionally held the job of premier--and one, Salim Hoss, already held the job.

Unperturbed, Aoun has moved into the presidential palace in Baabda, running the government as premier from the presidential suite. If Lebanese were expecting Aoun to emulate Gemayel in other ways, they were mistaken: The new dress code at the palace is olive drab T-shirts and camouflage fatigues.

Although appointed as an interim leader, Aoun is surprising a number of observers by speaking out as if he had been elected to the job of president, especially in his sharp criticism of Syria.

The Syrians maintain about 40,000 troops in Lebanon, which gives them a great deal of clout among the Muslims. In fact, the election of a new president foundered because the Syrians demanded that the candidate be Mikhail Daher, a parliamentarian acceptable to Damascus but not to the Christians.

“We don’t want a nominated governor of some Syrian district but a president of an independent Lebanon,” Aoun said in a recent interview with The Times.

“The problem is more important than having a president,” Aoun added. “Do we have the right to have a free, sovereign country or not? If we can have a country that is free and sovereign and independent, then we can elect a president. If not, we become a Syrian district. That’s the problem.”

Like Gemayel, the 53-year-old Aoun is a Maronite. Under the 1943 national covenant that divides government jobs among the various religious groups in the country, the jobs of president and army commander go to Maronites.

The soft-spoken Aoun is now devoting considerable time and energy to convincing Lebanese and foreign governments that he represents the legitimate power in Lebanon and that he will competently carry out his duties.

Iraq on Saturday become the first Arab country to recognize Aoun’s government.

In an interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Anba, Iraq’s first deputy prime minister, Taha Yassin Ramadan, threw his government’s support behind Aoun and criticized the Cabinet of Hoss, a Sunni Muslim, who also claims the premiership.

“The Hoss Cabinet has no legal basis,” Ramadan said. “We believe other nations should adopt a similar position, because Aoun’s Cabinet is a constitutional one.”

Although the Lebanese army split in 1984 into Christian and Muslim parts. officers had a tradition of not engaging in politics. There is one precedent for what happened last month: Gen. Fuad Chebab was appointed premier during a government crisis in 1952 and went on to become president.

“I am used to running institutions,” Aoun said in the interview. “Sometimes, between the military and politicians, there is a different way of speaking. But I think we are more able than personnel coming from business.”

Aoun’s original Cabinet had three Muslim army officers named as ministers, but they have refused to serve. Nonetheless, he said he would continue to respect the various religious groups in the country and represent “all the people,” not just the Christian minority.

Aoun was selected as army commander in 1984 by a government of “national conciliation.” An artillery specialist trained in Ft. Sill, Okla., he commanded the Christian 8th Brigade in East Beirut before taking on the army’s top job.

As commander of the army, he was faced with the thankless task of trying to maintain cohesion in a force rent by religious disputes and physically separated by warring militias. He has long advocated using the army to maintain order as a substitute for the ill-disciplined militias.

His two biggest headaches for the moment are the frosty state of his relations with Syria and the possibility of conflicts with the Christian community’s militia, the Lebanese Forces, which fields 11,000 heavily armed soldiers.

Despite Aoun’s efforts to communicate with Damascus, even to taunt the Syrians publicly, the Syrians have totally ignored him.

At the moment, the Lebanese Forces is one of Aoun’s biggest supporters, but the cordial relationship may not be able, in the words of one Western diplomat, “to stand the strains of a long marriage.”