Will Shun Role in Lebanon, Israeli Says

Israel won’t be drawn into the Lebanese conflict again, and Lebanon’s Christian army commander, Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, “will pay the price” for his mistakes, a government official said Thursday.

Syria has accused Aoun of involvement in the assassination Wednesday of new President Rene Mouawad, a Christian rival of the general. Aoun denies it.

“We don’t support Gen. Aoun,” said Yossi Olmert, director of the Israeli Government Press Office. “We are not in the pocket of any Lebanese warlord; no Lebanese warlord is in our pocket.”

Israel was allied with the Christians when it invaded Lebanon in 1982 to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organization, but it has taken an increasingly neutral position since withdrawing in 1985 from all but a border “security zone” in southern Lebanon.

Iraq has backed Aoun because of its enmity for Syria, and Olmert claimed that the PLO also supports the Christian general’s efforts to drive Syrian forces out of Lebanon.

“The Arab enemies of Syria do not happen to be our friends,” Olmert said in an interview. He added about Aoun: “He will do what he likes to do, and he will pay the price. It is his problem.”

In an unusually conciliatory statement toward Damascus, Olmert said:

“We have no problem with the Syrians managing to stabilize Lebanon if it is done on a legitimate basis acceptable to the Lebanese, and provided we (Israel) are not required to pay the price.”

Meanwhile, in Israel’s continuing unrest, violence in the West Bank left three Palestinians dead, including a woman killed when a suspected collaborator whose car was being stoned opened fire on a crowd, military and Palestinian sources said.

Two of the Palestinians were believed to have been killed by fellow Palestinians in the West Bank town of Nablus, a strongly nationalistic enclave known for its violence and activism.

One of them, Haniyeh Abdelrahim Swaiseh, 35, was shot three times by masked men as she entered the Casbah district, Palestinian sources said.