Lebanon’s Christian Leader Lashes U.S. : Washington Policy Favors His Syrian Foes, a Bitter Aoun Charges

Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, leader of Lebanon’s Christian forces, lashed out Saturday at a Washington policy that he charged favors his Syrian foes.

“The United States does not care about Lebanon,” the feisty, 54-year-old general told a press conference at the shell-shattered presidential palace at Baabda, outside Beirut. “When it says it is moved by our tragedies, it is lying. America’s declared policy is in support of Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence, but in practice America supports Syria’s presence in Lebanon. Syria has been besieging our coast . . . and preventing fuel supplies from reaching us. Why do the Americans permit this?”

In his second broadside against Washington in the past 72 hours, Aoun accused U.S. policy makers of “giving Syria one chance after the other to strike at Lebanon militarily without even denouncing any crime being committed,” according to Beirut press reports.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck said that the Bush Administration would have no immediate comment on Aoun’s charges. “We haven’t seen the full text of his statements, so we won’t have anything to say,” she said. But she said the Administration’s general policy on Lebanon has not changed.

The State Department has repeatedly condemned Syria’s actions in Lebanon, most recently on Aug. 14, when it accused Damascus of launching “an irresponsible escalation” of the conflict. “Syria and its allies should refrain from any further escalation and accept immediately international and Arab League calls for a cease-fire,” spokesman Richard Boucher said at the time.

But Washington has refused to lend direct military or diplomatic support to Aoun. Some U.S. officials have said they believe the Christian general is seeking to entangle the United States and other Western powers in Beirut as his only hope of countering Syrian power.

Limited Response

Most Administration officials, remembering the failure of President Ronald Reagan’s deployment of U.S. Marines in Lebanon, reject the idea of deeper U.S. involvement. As a result, the Administration’s policy has been limited to relatively modest diplomatic pressure on Syria--at a time when the United States is also asking Syria’s help in freeing American hostages.

Syria, which has shelled Lebanon’s beleaguered enclave of 1 million Christians from every quarter, concedes only to helping its Muslim militia allies in the fight against Aoun.

Aoun, commander of the predominantly Christian Lebanese army, which has been locked in conflict with Syrian troops for more than five months, has made clear in the past his intention to bring the Christians’ cause to the international community, figuring that big-power political support would counterbalance the Syrian military edge.

Last week, he openly encouraged the possibility of French military intervention, and Saturday he was quoted in an Italian magazine as saying he would “like so much for the Pope to come to Beirut. . . . We are a Christian nation, a bulwark of Christianity in the East, and John Paul II is our pastor.” He added, however, that the Pope’s advisers should consider the security problems in a city wrecked and depopulated by artillery fire that eased Saturday after two days of heavy exchanges.

Announced American policy, which favors a negotiated cease-fire and a political settlement through mediation by the Arab League, has disappointed Aoun, who had declared a “war of liberation” to drive the estimated 40,000 Syrian troops from his country, where they have been deployed since 1976, initially as an Arab League peacekeeping force.

The general, an artillery officer who took advanced training at Ft. Sill, Okla., and whose army was trained and equipped by the United States, Saturday tipped his hat to Moscow and its trouble-shooter, Gennady Tarasov, for “exerting sincere efforts for peace in Lebanon” while charging that Washington “does not accept Soviet involvement in the Mediterranean.”

He went on to accuse the United States of an undefined attempt “to scare off the Lebanese with the objective of putting them under Syria’s control to enable America to work out a settlement to the Middle East crisis at Lebanon’s expense.”

“This is a conspiracy,” he concluded.

The heavy shelling of the past two days slackened at dawn Saturday, but fires within the capital and on the wooded hillsides beyond suffused Beirut with smoke throughout the day. Police reports said 18 civilians were killed in Friday’s shelling. Roads were jammed Saturday as more Beirutis fled for safety during the shelling lull, while others returned for a quick check on their homes and businesses.

Times staff writer Doyle McManus, in Washington, contributed to this report.