The World - News from May 16, 1989

With a firm date for deployment of Arab League cease-fire observers in Lebanon still uncertain, diplomats said that hopes of lasting peace rest on next week’s Arab League summit. Although league envoys, in a week of shuttle diplomacy between Beirut and Damascus, won agreement from all parties on a truce and the deployment of a 300-member Arab peacekeeping force, diplomats said the force can’t move in because of continued shelling of Christian ports in Lebanon. “The last-ditch . . . chance is the summit,” one diplomat said. “If they (Lebanon’s warring parties) can’t come to some meeting of minds, it is hard to see what can be done after that.”