Both Sides in Lebanon Likely to OK Cease-Fire

Exhausted, running short of supplies and facing increasing international isolation, parties to Lebanon’s civil war are expected to accept an Arab mediating committee’s demand for an immediate cease-fire, diplomatic sources confirmed Friday.

An Arab League panel seeking to end the latest six-month round of violence that already has claimed more than 800 lives will issue a communique today that reportedly will call for a general cease-fire as a prelude to further negotiations aimed at finally resolving the 14-year-old conflict.

However, even as the committee prepared to issue the cease-fire call, a wave of fierce artillery battles broke out in Beirut that raised new questions about any hope for a lasting peace in the war-ravaged country.

Six More People Killed

Police reported at least six people killed and dozens wounded in the flare-up that sent Beirut residents fleeing again to basement shelters after a two-day lull.

Arab sources said the committee’s three-stage peace plan calls for lifting Syrian forces’ blockade over Beirut’s Christian ports once the cease-fire has been implemented and reopening Beirut International Airport. The airport has been closed since early March, when the latest round of clashes broke out between Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun’s Christian forces and an estimated 40,000 Syrian troops based in Lebanon.

Once all blockades are lifted, the third stage of the plan calls for the Lebanese Parliament to convene in another Arab country, possibly Saudi Arabia, to approve a political reform plan that would shift more power to Lebanon’s Muslim majority as a prelude to electing a new president.

An international committee of military observers will be appointed to supervise the cease-fire and prevent infiltration of additional arms to the warring parties, the sources said.

Details of the cease-fire plan were worked out during two days of meetings this week in the Saudi port city of Jidda by a committee made up of the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco. The ministers issued a brief statement late Thursday saying only that they had conducted a “necessary evaluation” of the situation in Lebanon.

They said an official communique would be issued today by the three heads of state appointed by the Arab League to mediate the crisis in Lebanon, Saudi King Fahd, King Hassan II of Morocco and Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid.

Before the latest round of heavy artillery fire, Arab diplomatic sources said both Christian and Syrian leaders--and the latter’s Muslim militia allies--had signaled their willingness to abide by the committee’s recommendations. Should they agree now to the call for a cease-fire, the guns could be silenced--if only temporarily--almost immediately, the sources said.

One Arab diplomat close to the discussions said that despite the dozens of cease-fires that have been negotiated in Lebanon, only to break apart in new rounds of shelling, there is optimism about the current plan because both Syrian President Hafez Assad and Aoun have found themselves increasingly isolated from the rest of the world in their dangerous, long-running feud.

Both Leaders Feel Pressure

Assad, whose forces entered Lebanon in 1976 at the request of the Arab League to stop internal fighting, has been subjected to substantial pressure to withdraw from other Arab leaders and from the Soviet Union, Syria’s major arms supplier.

Aoun, on the other hand, has faced mounting diplomatic pressures from the West, some of which came to a head earlier this month with the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in East Beirut.

A tentative peace mission by the same Arab League committee fell apart earlier this summer when Syria refused to agree to a timetable for pulling its troops out of Lebanon. But Aoun reportedly has aided the new efforts by agreeing to defer the issue of a timetable for a Syrian withdrawal, while Syria, for its part, reportedly has agreed to a limited lifting of its blockade of Christian seaports.

Long-Term Prospects Dim

Even those diplomats and analysts who were optimistic about the current cease-fire talks remained uncertain, however, about long-term prospects for peace in the war-ravaged nation.

Some predicted that the parties have agreed to a cease-fire only in order regroup, reevaluate and build new support for their positions in the international community.

“Both parties are willing to make some compromise to get some breathing space and reposition themselves in Lebanon and gain some international support,” said Heino Kopietz, a Lebanon analyst at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. “They have to be seen to be moderate for the time being to regain friends.”

A source close to Aoun’s Christian government agreed that, even should the cease-fire hold for the time being, there is no guarantee of a long-term resolution of a civil war that has already killed more than 130,000 Lebanese and sent 80% of Beirut’s population fleeing from the city.

The positions that led to the current conflict--Aoun’s insistence that foreign troops leave Lebanon and Syria’s refusal to bow out until Israeli security forces pull out of southern Lebanon--have not changed, he said.

“After 15 years of civil war, nobody is optimistic in Lebanon anymore,” he said. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”