John Paul Reportedly Adamant : Vatican Gingerly Handles Papal Wish to Visit Beirut

Against their better judgment, Vatican diplomats are maneuvering through the tangled web of Middle East intrigue and violence in a long-shot attempt to arrange a visit by Pope John Paul II to war-shattered Lebanon.

Responding to what he calls an “interior command,” the Pope wants to go immediately. But chances are slim that he will get his way, and this would not dismay aides who fear for his safety.

“Who in Lebanon today can guarantee the Pope’s well-being? Nobody,” a Vatican official said.

John Paul has been warned repeatedly about the dangers involved in a visit to Lebanon, the official said, but is adamant.

Pontiff ‘Insists’

“We have told him how dangerous it is,” one aide said. “He insists.”

Time and again in recent months, the Pope has decried the violence in Lebanon, and last week the Vatican acknowledged that it is trying to arrange a papal visit as a peacemaking gesture. But the initial momentum appears to be lost.

Officially, the Vatican says it is exploring the possibility “at various levels.” It said there have been conversations with Christians and Muslims alike, as well as with officials of outside countries directly involved in the violence and in the search for peace: Syria, Iran, France and the Soviet Union.

As now envisioned, a papal visit would last a few hours and would take John Paul to Christian and Muslim sections of Beirut.

But the basic arrangements of the sort that have become routine in John Paul’s globe-trotting become controversial and perhaps insurmountable dilemmas in a country caught up in civil war.

“How would we get him there?” one aide said. “Where would he land? How would we transport him through the city? Where would he make his appearances? To whom? We have questions but no answers.”

Prospects for a papal visit were diminished Wednesday by internal maneuvering in Lebanon. Amid parallel cease-fire initiatives by France and the Soviet Union, two Islamic leaders warned that a papal visit at this time would be counterproductive.

The spiritual leader of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah fundamentalists, Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who told reporters in Beirut over the weekend that the Pope would be welcome, changed his mind Wednesday.

Fadlallah, an influential figure among Shiite Muslim terrorists believed to be holding 14 Western hostages, including eight Americans, said that a papal visit now could further entangle the search for peace.

The situation is “too complicated to be solved by the Pope’s visit,” the British news agency Reuters quoted Fadlallah as saying. “There are complications which make the visit difficult.”

These reservations were echoed by Nabih Berri, chief of Lebanon’s pro-Syrian Amal militia, another Shiite group. He told the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera that the Pope’s timing is bad.

“I am always ready to receive the Holy Father, but this does not seem to be the right moment,” Berri said.

Viewed With Suspicion

The French peace proposal, which is viewed with suspicion by Syria, calls for an arms embargo, reforms to give Muslims greater political say and the withdrawal of occupying foreign military forces.

Earlier this month, the Pope accused Syria of seeking to destroy Lebanon and Muslims of trying to wipe out the Christian areas of Beirut. That drew immediate fire from Muslims. Fadlallah, for one, lamented what he called the absence of John Paul’s usual “superior impartiality.”

Since then, the Vatican has been scrupulously neutral in its public statements.