HOSTAGE CRISIS IN LEBANON : Lebanon Peace Efforts Collapse; Syria Blamed

An Arab diplomatic effort to bring peace to bloody Lebanon collapsed early Tuesday, and Christian leader Michel Aoun predicted later that a “sweeping river of resistance” will rise against a Syrian army deployed in the beleaguered country.

After two days of talks in Rabat, Morocco, an Arab League committee comprising the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco declared that it had reached an impasse in its efforts to stop a four-month-old artillery war between Lebanese Christians and Syrian troops.

A statement issued early Tuesday laid most of the blame on the Syrian government, saying its “concept of spreading (Lebanese) sovereignty is different from the committee’s stand.”

Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, Morocco’s King Hassan II and Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid were appointed by the 22-nation league in late May to try to force compliance with a cease-fire proclaimed earlier and to find a political formula for disengagement and peace. But the committee’s Algerian emissary to the warring sides in Beirut was given little more than polite audiences as the fighting escalated over the last two months.

The Rabat statement said the committee had proposed a timetable for “a government of national entente to spread its authority with its own forces over all Lebanon’s territory.” No specific details were released. Syria, the statement noted, insisted that the question of sovereignty not be linked to a definite timetable.

A Prompt Withdrawal

Neither the Syrians nor the Lebanese Christians have appeared eager to settle the conflict by diplomacy and compromise. Aoun, who is a major general and commands the mostly Christian Lebanese army, and his Christian followers demand a prompt or quickly phased Syrian withdrawal.

The Syrians refuse to surrender their traditional sway over Lebanon and will not even contemplate leaving while Israeli troops still occupy parts of the south. Moderate Arab states have found no room to maneuver between the two hard-line positions.

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan declared before the impasse was announced in Rabat that Arab leaders should convene a summit and approve moves “to impose the opinion of the majority,” instead of leaving Lebanon “to its sons who have lost their minds because of the multiplicity of players who are raising havoc with the people’s destiny.”

Few participants ever expressed much hope for the diplomatic effort, and the ugly antipathy between Aoun and Syrian President Hafez Assad soured what chance the mission might have had. Lebanon remains a destabilizing crisis throughout the Middle East, site of a 14-year-old civil war between Lebanese Christians and Muslims that has grown into a proxy conflict among outsiders.

The Israelis hold a strip of southern Lebanon, Palestinian guerrillas patrol the refugee camps, Iranian Revolutionary Guards are stationed in the Bekaa Valley, Iraq is arming the Christian forces and the Syrian army controls two-thirds of the country. Radical organizations, such as the Muslim group that claimed Monday to have killed American hostage William R. Higgins, are extreme examples illustrating that violence is power in Lebanon.

In the past two weeks, relentless nightly barrages by Syrian and Christian gunners have emptied Beirut of all but 200,000 of its 1.5 million residents. More than 500 Lebanese have been killed since the fighting started in March. Both the Christian eastern sector and the Muslim west are turning to rubble, according to news reports reaching Cyprus, 80 miles off Lebanon.

Predicting spreading resistance, Aoun--who heads a Christian Cabinet in East Beirut that is opposed by the Syrian-supported Muslim Cabinet of acting Premier Salim Hoss--issued a military order Tuesday marking Army Day, declaring in part: “The era of the popular liberation revolt will not be far off. . . . It will be a sweeping river of resistance in every city, village street and house. . . . (Syrian) occupation will be eliminated, and the nation is heading toward sovereignty.”

As Aoun issued his order and the Arab diplomats announced the stalemate in their attempt to establish order, the conflict continued. A black Mercedes-Benz loaded with an estimated 88 pounds of explosives blew up on a highway in West Beirut. No injuries were reported, and no target was apparent.