Aoun Fired as Lebanon’s Military Chief : Middle East: A new commander is named as Syrian forces close in on Beirut’s Christian enclave.

Lebanon’s new reconciliation government Tuesday dismissed Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun as commander of the army, as Syrian troops and armaments began ringing the outskirts of Beirut’s Christian enclave for a possible move to drive out the stubborn military chief.

As thousands of Aoun’s supporters formed a protective wall around the presidential palace at Baabda, Defense Minister Albert Mansour announced the appointment of a new commander in chief and urged Lebanon’s 42,000 troops, long divided into sectarian factions, to unite behind him.

“Whoever declares loyalty to the legitimate authorities remains a member of the army, and whoever deviates from the legitimate authority, he will be out of the institution,” Mansour said.

Aoun, in an interview with the French radio station France Inter, said he continues to reject “all acts coming from a puppet power.” In a news conference Monday, he vowed to resist any attempt to force him out of the presidential palace, even with “kitchen knives, sticks and stones.”

The 54-year-old Maronite Catholic, who has headed an interim Christian government since last year, has rejected an Arab League-brokered plan for a new reconciliation government because it fails to provide for the immediate withdrawal of Syria’s 40,000 troops from Lebanon.

Newly elected President Elias Hrawi and his predecessor, Rene Mouawad, assassinated last week after only 17 days in office, were both selected with Syria’s endorsement and have acted, in Aoun’s view, as agents for the Syrians.

Sunday night, Hrawi gave Aoun 48 hours to relinquish his hold on Christian East Beirut and join the new government.

According to news agency reports from Beirut, Syrian tanks and troops began rolling in along the Beirut-to-Damascus highway, taking up positions northeast and southeast of the Christian enclave. Witnesses in Beirut’s southern suburbs told Reuters that Syrian troops were digging trenches and installing artillery guns pointed east along the dividing line between Christian East and Muslim West Beirut.

Apparently hoping to head off a violent confrontation, France on Tuesday dispatched a special envoy, senior diplomat Francois Scheer, who met with Hrawi in the Syrian-controlled town of Chtoura, in eastern Lebanon, and then was reportedly preparing to go on to Damascus. The French Foreign Ministry declared that France “will not be on the side of those who would assume the responsibility of again taking up violence.”

Any military action to remove Aoun would constitute the first substantial fighting in Lebanon since an Arab League-backed cease-fire Sept. 23 ended six months of some of the worst bloodshed seen in 14 years of civil war.

Although more than 800 people were killed in the most recent round of battles, launched in March when Aoun vowed to drive Syria out of Lebanon, neither Syria nor its Muslim allies ever launched a ground invasion of the Christian enclave.

Apparently hoping to stave off any such plan, thousands of Aoun’s supporters surrounded the palace at Baabda where he is encamped, waving Lebanese flags, lighting small bonfires and declaring their loyalty to him, news agencies reported.

Named the new army commander after a two-hour Cabinet meeting was Gen. Emile Lahoud, a Maronite Catholic and commander of Lebanon’s small navy. Lahoud had a falling-out with Aoun during the most recent fighting and has been without an assignment since.

Mansour also announced the dismissal of Farouk Abilamma, Aoun’s closest foreign affairs adviser. He has been replaced as secretary general of the Foreign Ministry by Suheil Shammas, Lebanon’s ambassador to West Germany.