Baker Makes a Surprise Side Trip Into Lebanon : Mideast: High-security detour is meant to dramatize nation’s recovery after more than 15 years of turbulence.

Traveling in an armored convoy under heavy security, Secretary of State James A. Baker III made a surprise visit to Lebanon on Thursday in an effort to dramatize the country’s increasing stability and its recovery from more than 15 years of bloody civil war and anarchy.

Led by army vehicles and a mounted 7.62-millimeter machine gun, with Syrian intelligence and security officers joining American escorts in the motorcade, the secretary of state crossed at midday from Damascus across the Lebanese border into the Bekaa Valley, the area from which terrorist groups have launched a series of bombings and kidnapings of Americans and other Westerners.

So intense was the security that during Baker’s return to Damascus, after news of his presence inside Lebanon had spread and thus increased the potential danger, his official convoy was preceded by an entire 12-car “dummy” motorcade. The fake convoy, which even included an ambulance, was designed to divert any potential attackers.

Baker’s trip was the highest-level American visit to Lebanon since then-Vice President George Bush came in October, 1983, days after 241 U.S. servicemen were killed in a car-bomb attack in Beirut.

The terror-filled days of the mid- and late 1980s followed. In those years, the Reagan and Bush administrations were preoccupied with efforts to free the Americans taken hostage by terrorist groups in Lebanon, such as the Hezbollah militia. Many of the hostages were held in the same region through which Baker traveled Thursday.

“I have to tell you, I never felt that I would be coming to the Bekaa Valley, having been in the United States government in one form or another for the past 12 years,” Baker told a press conference held at the country home of Lebanese President Elias Hrawi in the town of Zahlah, 33 miles from Beirut. “I do believe that it’s an indication of the extent to which the United States supports the political independence and sovereignty of Lebanon.”

Lebanese officials, who had been urging an American visit to help dramatize Lebanon’s recovery, were clearly thrilled. “Lebanon has lived a painful 16 years, and . . . you are witnessing Lebanon’s way out from the misery of war,” Hrawi told the secretary of state. Lebanon’s civil war erupted in 1975 and raged intermittently until peace was imposed last year with the help of Syria, the dominant foreign power in Lebanon.

Baker’s trip underscored the declining influence of terrorist groups over American policy in the Middle East. Some American counterterrorism experts have argued that the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union have deprived terrorists of valuable support.

Baker’s visit also demonstrated the Bush Administration’s willingness to recognize Syria, which maintains 35,000 to 40,000 troops in Lebanon, as a powerful and continuing influence in Lebanon’s political affairs, while still working to safeguard Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence.

Lebanese Christians have been trying to forestall new elections at a time when, they argue, the country is under Syrian domination. In contrast, pro-Syrian forces have favored the idea of holding elections in Lebanon next month.

At his brief press conference, Baker said the timing of elections “is a decision of the Lebanese government alone to make.” But he said it is “vital that any elections be free of any hint of intimidation or apparent coercion”--evidently a reference to Lebanese fears of Syrian domination.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh, who was involved in the last-minute planning of Baker’s visit, accompanied the secretary of state from Damascus to the Lebanese border. On the Syrian side, Baker traveled in a motorcade of four lightly armored vehicles.

At the Lebanese border town of Masnaa, Baker and his party were met by U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Ryan Crocker and Lebanese Foreign Minister Faris Bouez as they switched to a more heavily armored convoy. During the drive through the Bekaa Valley, Baker rode in an armored Cadillac limousine. Syrian antiaircraft positions could be seen amid the vineyards and wheat fields.

At the press conference, held in Hrawi’s white-stone home under the eyes of Lebanese sharpshooters guarding the rooftops, Baker--who had met the night before with Syrian President Hafez Assad--acknowledged that there are some disagreements between the United States and Syria about how soon Syrian troops should pull back from the Beirut area.

Under the 1989 Taif Agreement, negotiated by Arab governments in an effort to develop a workable government for Lebanon, Syria is supposed to work with Lebanon to withdraw Syrian troops from the Beirut area to the Bekaa Valley within two years after the initiation of new constitutional reforms in Lebanon.

Lebanese officials have argued that this agreement means the Syrian withdrawal should come by this September, but Syria has refused to commit itself to such a date. “I think that the government of Syria wants to redeploy its forces . . . as soon as possible,” Baker told the press conference. “In our interpretation, the government of Syria and Lebanon should get together in September to begin to decide how to begin the deployment.”

The United States has repeatedly said it favors the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon, including not only the Syrians but also a few thousand Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.

Hours before Baker’s arrival, Israeli warplanes raided suspected hide-outs of Shiite Muslim guerrillas in southern Lebanon, wire services reported.

The raid came two days after an Israeli soldier was killed and five were wounded in two Hezbollah attacks in southern Lebanon.

When asked by one reporter whether the visit to Lebanon amounted to a “stunt,” an aide to Baker angrily replied: “This is not a stunt. He (Baker) is out here doing substantive work. He’s working his butt off. He’s not a frivolous person into the business of stunts.”

Baker held about 4 1/2 hours of talks with Assad and other Syrian officials Wednesday. Syria is the Arab government whose cooperation Baker most needs in working out a Mideast peace settlement. At a press conference Thursday morning, Syrian Foreign Minister Shareh said his country is willing to resume peace talks with Israel “as soon as possible” and hopes that the new Israeli government of Yitzhak Rabin will improve the chances for a settlement.

But the Syrian foreign minister rejected suggestions that Syria and other Arab governments should now make concessions in response to Israel’s recent moves to curtail the construction of new settlements in the occupied territories.

Baker later flew to Jidda for a meeting with Saudi King Fahd.

Special correspondent Marilyn Raschka, in Beirut, contributed to this report.

BACKGROUND

James A. Baker III is the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Lebanon in almost a decade. In May, 1983, George P. Shultz went to the nation to sign an agreement designed to promote peace between Lebanon and Israel; the accord was later torpedoed by Syria. Five months after Shultz’s trip, a suicide car-bombing at a U.S. Marine Corps barracks prompted then-Vice President George Bush to fly to Beirut. The attack, blamed on Islamic terrorists, killed 241 U.S. servicemen. Fifty-eight French paratroops were slain in a similar simultaneous attack. The incidents were part of a wave of kidnapings, assassinations and other attacks against Westerners that prompted Washington to declare Lebanon off limits for U.S. citizens in much of the 1980s.