French Official in Beirut on Peace Mission; Oil Tanker Hit by Syrians

After another night of violence in which Syrian artillery left an oil tanker ablaze, a high-ranking French diplomat shuttled to Beirut on Tuesday to press international efforts for a truce and political reforms in battered Lebanon.

Francois Scheer, secretary general of the French Foreign Ministry, immediately entered into talks with Lebanese Muslim and Christian officials. On Sunday, Paris proposed a three-step peace plan for Lebanon and scaled back its deployment of warships in the eastern Mediterranean. Scheer is presenting the plan to the Syrians, who are the dominant power in Lebanon, and to the divided Lebanese.

For the past two days he has been in Damascus, meeting with President Hafez Assad and other Syrian officials, and he is scheduled to push on to Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco, whose leaders backed an aborted Arab League initiative to stop the fighting.

Aflame Off the Coast

As Scheer arrived by road from Damascus, the small oil tanker, hit by Syrian shells early Tuesday, was aflame off the Christian-held coast north of Beirut. The ship, carrying 2,000 tons of fuel oil to replenish bone-dry Christian stocks, was almost 10 miles offshore when it was hit by radar-directed Syrian artillery, according to press reports from Beirut.

Tentatively identified as the Lebanese-owned Sun Shield, the tanker carried a crew of 10 and a Lebanese-Armenian captain. Nine of the men, including the captain, were missing and feared dead, a police spokesman said. One survivor was reported in critical condition.

The ship was attempting to slip through the Syrian naval blockade of Christian ports when it was hit about 2:30 a.m. In response--and to provide cover for coast guard boats attempting to put out the fire and salvage the cargo--Christian gunners shelled Syrian batteries in West Beirut, triggering a five-hour barrage on both sides of the divided capital, the heaviest shelling since the U.N. Security Council called for a cease-fire two weeks ago.

Initial police reports said three people were killed and 10 were wounded in the shelling, which diminished at dawn. In five months of conflict between the predominantly Christian Lebanese forces of Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun and the combined forces of Syria and its Lebanese Muslim allies, more than 700 people have been killed, more than 3,000 wounded and hundreds of thousands driven from the capital in search of safety.

Surrounded by Syrians

At least five ships have been hit by Syrian shellfire while trying to supply the beleaguered Christian enclave, surrounded by Syrian regulars and Muslim militiamen on three sides. The Christians control just 28 miles of Mediterranean coastline.

The Syrians reportedly have reinforced their positions along the perimeter of the enclave in the past two weeks, and pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian Muslim militias have vowed to crush Aoun. Damascus officials call Aoun dangerous, belittle him as unstable and fear his demands for Lebanese independence, which could only be achieved by curtailing Syrian influence in Lebanon.

“Syria will not permit a defeat to be suffered by the patriotic forces in Lebanon or a victory for the forces opposed to Arab nationalism generally and to the Arab character of Lebanon,” the official English-language Syria Times said Sunday in an editorial, making plain a policy that is backed up by 40,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon. Aoun commands half that many, and with allies included on both sides, the Christian forces are outmanned about 3 to 1 by the Muslims.

4 Days of Bombardment

The U.N. resolution, which followed the Syrian-supported first ground attack of the five-month-old Christian-Muslim conflict, cooled off the artillery exchanges after four days of devastating day-and-night bombardment.

In addition to France, which once ruled Lebanon, the Soviet Union has moved onto the scene with a highly visible diplomatic initiative, dispatching a trouble-shooter, Gennady Tarasov, to Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad. The Soviets are not only Syria’s major arms supplier but are also shipping weapons to Iraq, which in turn is arming the Christians of Lebanon.

France sent an aircraft carrier and several other warships toward Lebanese waters on what the French said was a humanitarian mission. The ships were halted far short of the coast after Muslim outrage appeared to threaten Paris’ diplomatic effort.

On Sunday, the French unveiled the peace plan that envoy Scheer is now discussing in Damascus and Beirut. Some Muslim militia spokesmen have already rejected it, and its announced provisions appear to be distasteful to the Syrians.

Signs of Improvement

“In the past two weeks, the situation in Lebanon has improved somewhat,” Foreign Minister Roland Dumas declared in announcing the outlines of the plan. “All this, in large part, is the result of (France’s) diplomatic action.”

He cited as signs of improvement the renewed international concern with the 14-year-old civil war, the Soviet truce initiative and the absence of a Syrian-supported ground attack on the Christian enclave, the threat of which unleashed the diplomatic activity.

That possibility, countered by the unspoken French response of a naval counterthreat, provided the room for the diplomats to try to defuse the crisis.

The key to the French proposal would be some sort of arms embargo satisfactory to both sides. The Syrians have insisted that any cease-fire include a verifiable prohibition of sea shipments of arms to the Christians, but they have rejected any monitoring of their own resupply.

“So a balanced arrangement must be found,” Dumas said.

In terms of subsequent political reforms, Dumas appeared more flexible toward demands by the Muslims--who are the majority in Lebanon--that Christian influence be abated.

“The system of coexistence between communities, which worked in the past,” he said, “no longer corresponds to the demographic and social situation. There must be change.”

Aoun refuses to make any political commitments until the Syrian forces have left Lebanon.