Beirut Shelling Continues Despite U.N. Call for Peace

The Christian commander of Lebanon’s army welcomed a U.N. call to halt increasingly fierce fighting in Lebanon, but there was no official word Wednesday from Syrian-backed Muslim forces, who have ringed Christian territory with guns and armor.

Fierce shelling erupted Wednesday across the so-called Green Line that divides Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, into Muslim and Christian sectors, after a short period of relative calm.

Syrian gunners also shelled the Christian enclave north and east of Beirut, and the Christians responded by firing on residential areas of mostly Muslim West Beirut. Several apparently unoccupied apartment houses in the Muslim sector were set ablaze. Six people were wounded in Christian territory, police reported.

The cease-fire appeal was issued late Tuesday by the U.N. Security Council in New York. The resolution was approved during an emergency meeting called by U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.

A spokesman for the Christian commander, Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, said, “The general unconditionally welcomes the U.N. Security Council resolution.” However, he added that the general views the resolution as a “package deal”--meaning that Syrian forces besieging the Christian enclave would have to lift their blockade for the resolution to take effect.

In a telephone interview from the gutted presidential palace at Baabda, Aoun affirmed that he welcomes the Security Council’s statement but reserves for himself “the natural right for self-defense.”

Syria has not officially replied to the U.N. appeal, although President Hafez Assad, in a message to the Italian government released in Rome, promised to do his utmost “to silence the guns and promote, as far as possible, an inter-Lebanese agreement.”

Assad’s letter, received Tuesday, was in response to a message sent Aug. 2 by Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, according to an Italian official.

Five months of artillery duels between the Syrians and the 20,000-member force headed by Aoun have killed more than 750 people and wounded more than 2,000, nearly all of them civilians.

The U.N. resolution said, in part: “The Council . . . urgently appeals to all the parties to put an immediate end to all operations and to all firing and shelling on land and sea.”

It also appealed for the parties “to do everything possible to secure the consolidation of the cease-fire, the opening of the lines of communication and the lifting of sieges.”

‘Senseless Bloodshed’

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher read a statement that said, in part: “The senseless bloodshed . . . has gone on for far too long, and it must cease. We urge in the strongest terms that all parties abide by the council’s call for a total and immediate cease-fire.”

Aoun, whose offices have been repeatedly hit in the recent fighting, calls Syrian troops an occupation army and has declared a “war of liberation” to drive them out. Syria has about 40,000 soldiers in Lebanon under an Arab League peacekeeping mandate granted in 1976, the year after the sectarian civil war began.

On Wednesday, Muslim security sources said the Muslim allies moved more tanks, troops and ammunition up to their positions along the 65-mile confrontation line with Aoun’s outnumbered forces.

One said the Syrians deployed Soviet-designed T-62 tanks on the northern and eastern flanks of the 310-square-mile Christian zone and that Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt positioned scores of T-54 and T-55 tanks in the mountains to the south. The Christian area faces the Mediterranean on the west.

Druze Jeeps in West Beirut

Druze fighters, seen manning jeep-mounted machine guns and recoilless cannons, were seen in West Beirut for the first time since Syrian troops moved into the Muslim sector in February, 1987, to stop factional war among militias.

The Lebanese capital has taken the brunt of the battle. All but 150,000 of its 1.5 million people have left since the shelling began in early March.

Acting Lebanese Premier Salim Hoss, who is a Sunni Muslim, and Sunni religious leaders also embraced the U.N. truce appeal, which was broadcast by Beirut radio stations.

“On behalf of all the suffering people, who are the majority of the population in Lebanon, I welcome the cease-fire,” Hoss said.

Hoss added, however, that Aoun should end his “war of liberation” against Syria and that Syria’s allies should end their blockade on the Christian enclave.

Hoss and Aoun lead competing Muslim and Christian Cabinets, formed during a government crisis in September, 1988, that also led to a split of the army into Christian and Muslim commands.

The artillery war began two days after Aoun’s forces blockaded illegal ports run by Muslim militias that deprived the government of about $100 million a year in customs revenue.

On Wednesday night, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati returned to Tehran from Damascus after assuring Syria and its Lebanese allies of his country’s support. Velayati met Lebanese and Muslim leftist leaders one by one at the Iranian Embassy in the Syrian capital after presiding over a session with various militia leaders.

Meetings With Militias

Among the militia leaders who took part were Druze leader Jumblatt, Nabih Berri of the Shiite Muslim Amal militia and Ahmed Jibril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a Syrian-based Palestinian group that has been implicated in terrorist incidents. Also attending was Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh.

Cease-fires in Beirut seldom last, and few Lebanese appeared to believe that the U.N. resolution would have much impact unless the underlying political disputes are solved.

“It seems we are heading for a new confrontation despite this cease-fire call; the militias are back,” said Talal Hosseini, watching his janitor fill plastic bags with sand to fortify the entrance of his apartment house.

Another resident, Adla Haroun, commented: “It is yet another call which will go down the drain. If U.N. resolutions were effective, all wars across the world would have ended by now.”