Gorbachev, Mitterrand Call for Cease-Fire in Lebanon

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and President Francois Mitterrand appealed today for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon and an end to arms deliveries to Lebanese groups involved in the conflict.

In a statement after two days of talks, the leaders said they supported attempts by the Arab League to settle the Lebanese civil war but also said their countries are available to help with other efforts to reach a peaceful settlement “notably in the framework of the United Nations Security Council.”

France and the Soviet Union are among the five permanent members of the Security Council.

The statement said Gorbachev and Mitterrand “are convinced that Lebanon must remain sovereign, independent, united, with its territorial integrity respected.”

The 14-year-old civil war in Lebanon, a former French possession, has pitted Christians against Muslims and Druze militias.

The statement followed Gorbachev’s meeting with French intellectuals and students at the Sorbonne in which he cautioned the West against false hopes that his vision of a “common European home” could lead East Bloc nations to capitalism.

Gorbachev told about 2,000 people at the medieval university that Western nations should not harbor illusions that socialist countries will “return to the capitalist fold” or that “only bourgeois society embodies eternal values.”

“That is not the path toward a consensus on the direction of the common European home,” Gorbachev told students, journalists and Sovietologists at a packed university amphitheater.