U.S. Launches Bid to Cool Hot Tempers in Lebanon

The United States has launched a diplomatic drive to avert bloodshed in Lebanon, urging Syria, Israel and other Middle East states to show restraint in a menacing situation, the Administration said Thursday.

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said Washington had contacted Syria, Israel, Lebanon’s newly elected president, Elias Hrawi, the Soviet Union and European states urging all to use their influence to prevent violence.

“We have counseled all concerned against the use of force. We have also contacted the Lebanese government, key European allies, Arab friends, the Soviet Union and Syria,” Tutwiler said.

Earlier, a State Department official said that the U.S. ambassador in Damascus, Edward Djerjian, had met with Syrian government officials and urged them not to attack hard-line Christian Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, who has barricaded himself in the presidential palace in Beirut.

In Beirut, Hrawi vowed Thursday to recover the presidential palace and other government institutions from a defiant Aoun, but said he would try to avoid bloodshed.

He spoke at a news conference as hundreds of Syrian army trucks carried supplies to front-line positions in South Beirut and in mountains east and northeast of the capital.

“The Syrian troops are in combat formations. Their command is supplying them with ammunition enough to last for quite a long time,” according to a military source in Muslim West Beirut.

Israel Radio reported that Aoun has requested military support from the commander of Israel’s surrogate militia, the South Lebanon Army commanded by Gen. Antoine Lahad, but that Israel had rejected the appeal.

Lahad commands the Israeli-backed, 2,500-man militia, which patrols a buffer zone Israel maintains in Lebanon, ostensibly to protect its northern border against guerrilla attacks.

Aoun aides had no immediate comment on the report.

“I will resort to all possible means to regain the state institutions from those who control them,” Hrawi, a Maronite Catholic, said at the news conference in Ablah, an army barracks in the Syrian-policed Bekaa Valley.