Lebanese Forces Claim Aoun Troop Defections : Civil war: Geagea’s outnumbered militia reportedly is turning the tide as Christian fights Christian. Another cease-fire quickly fizzles.

Lebanese Christian militia forces, fighting against odds to withstand the forces of renegade Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, held on Saturday through a fourth day of bloody urban warfare and claimed defections were beginning to bleed the general’s loyalists.

Press reports from Beirut said the Lebanese Forces militia, outnumbered 3 to 1 by Aoun’s Lebanese army brigades, had begun to turn the tide in the battle for Christian supremacy in East Beirut. Unofficial estimates put the number of dead in the internecine battle at around 160, with many hundreds more wounded.

According to the reports, a collapse of Aoun’s forces along the northern sector of the Green Line dividing Christian East Beirut from the Muslim west, and in the key main basins of the Lebanese capital’s main port, had cut off the general’s only sea link for resupply. While the Aoun troops--and the militia--had a good supply of ammunition ashore, the reported loss of the port would be a major setback for Aoun, who has made little ground since last Tuesday when he tried to bring the independent militia to heel.

Several press accounts said that hundreds of Aoun’s men, fiercely loyal to the nationalist general in the past, have defected, some going to Muslim-dominated West Beirut and others surrendering to the militia. There was no independent confirmation of defections.

The fighting continued through a fourth day after a two-hour pause in which it appeared that the sixth cease-fire since Wednesday might take hold. Press reports said both camps--Aoun’s army troops and Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces militia--made a commitment to halt the combat. The truce was promoted by Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, primate of Lebanon’s major Christian church, the Maronites, and Vatican representative Pablo Puente.

The cease-fire lasted no longer than earlier ones, as the two sides resumed the shelling and street battles.

Militarily, there appeared to be no clear winner in the struggle, which broke into open warfare Wednesday after Aoun demanded that the 6,000-man militia lay down its arms and submit to his authority in the Christian sector. But in failing to crack the defiant militia, the 15,000 uniformed Aoun loyalists have lost a measure of prestige.

Winners or losers mattered not to the civilian population, still trapped in burning buildings without water or power Saturday afternoon. In the face of a string of failed cease-fires, few were leaving their shelters. Many casualties remained where they fell in the glass- and shrapnel-littered streets, press reports said.

Fires blazed through buildings in the residential areas of East Beirut and along the coastal suburbs north to the port of Juniyah. Snipers reportedly pinned down firefighters.

Even if the fighting is brought to an end, the dispute between the 54-year-old Aoun and Geagea, 40, the low-profile leader of the Lebanese Forces, seems irreconcilable.

Over the years when the fighting in Lebanon’s long-running civil war was concentrated in the Muslim areas of the country, the militia had created a self-reliant pseudo-state in the Christian sector, providing an umbrella of protection--some say intimidation--and welfare organizations funded by a militia tax on all enterprises, from small shops and restaurants to big commercial businesses.

Aoun, who headed the Christian part of a divided Lebanese government for 12 months in 1988 and 1989, was irked by the militia taxation and drove the Lebanese Forces out of the main Beirut port last February. But he never brought the militia fully under his control.

With his authority declared illegal by Elias Hrawi, the new Lebanese president, Aoun moved again in the past week to gather all Christian armed power to himself. If the fighting ends in a truce, it seems unlikely that the general will be able to restore relations with the Lebanese Forces even to the level of the uneasy alliance that existed a week ago.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole lamented Lebanon’s “long night of death and destruction,” saying all foreign forces should leave the war-torn country.

“For too many in Washington, Lebanon has fallen off the screen. The only ‘issues list’ that it tops is the list of those issues to avoid in the future,” the Kansas senator said in a speech prepared for a dinner Saturday night sponsored by the American Task Force on Lebanon, an organization of about 100 prominent Americans of Lebanese descent.

Dole called on Lebanon’s Christians “to end their bloody test of might and will.”

He urged appointment of a special American envoy--”someone who will devote full time and attention to Lebanon, someone who will make it clear that the United States is serious about Lebanon.”