Market Focus : Beirut Builders Find 2 Paths to Recovery : A purge of corrupt officials didn’t end the use of bribery. But more agencies are taking a modern, ethical approach.

When the young Lebanese woman arrived to interview for a job in Beirut’s resurgent business sector, she was chomping on a wad of gum, wearing makeup that would make Tammy Bakker cringe and insisting that she would consider only executive secretarial positions despite a dearth of experience.

Crushed by 15 years of civil war, the seaside capital has regained its Middle Eastern fire for commerce, but finding qualified personnel is just one of the hurdles facing local and foreign entrepreneurs. There is, as always, the need for grease, the kind represented by crisp paper bills. And developers would give an arm for a working phone. First-rate secretaries may be as rare: One agency reported 50 requests for English-speaking secretaries. Only three suitable candidates were found.

Even the 30 foreign companies here under contract with the Lebanese government’s Council for Development and Reconstruction find roadblocks at every turn. South Korea’s Hyundai conglomerate has sent men in to help French and Italian companies repair the country’s collapsing power system. The Korean engineers, who came without their families, live in boarding houses, work 10 hours a day, 6 1/2 days a week, and go six months between home leaves.

“This way of working makes us cheaper than European firms,” said a business manager with one of the Korean companies.

Lebanon’s estimated $4.4-billion reconstruction means good money for all the foreigners, but the pitfalls are as deep as the postholes they are digging.

Like other foreign businesses, the Koreans have found at least two codes of business ethics at work here, traditional and modern--or crooked and clean.

The traditional method involves the payment of baksheesh--bribes--every foot of the way. “These people (in some government agencies) are of the old mentality, they should be replaced by young, young-thinking people,” the Korean manager complained after months of frustration.

A purge of corrupt government officials took place last year. A list of 6,000 accused individuals was produced. The disciplinary team was lauded. But then the inevitable happened. Pressure groups went into action. Only 600 people were cast out--many to be quietly reinstated.

The Council for Development and Reconstruction, on the other hand, has a clean bill of ethics. Bids are opened in front of all participating companies and payments are made on time, the Korean manager said. Set up in 1977, the council was revamped by businessman Rafik Hariri after he was appointed prime minister in 1992. Last Christmas, Hyundai handed out promotional pens to council staff. No, the Koreans were told, we cannot accept gifts, just send a card.

Even higher ethics ratings go to Solidere, the private real estate company the council created to rebuild Beirut’s city center. Many of its staff are U.S.-educated--young, bright and modern.

Clean or dirty, any business eventually depends on communications, one of Lebanon’s most stubborn business problems. A Lebanese-Canadian businessman said he offered $2,000 in bribes to get a phone line. The money should have done the trick, but there weren’t any lines available.

Private companies provide cellular phones for $1,500, five times what a business might pay in the United States. One Lebanese businessman has been paying $300 a year to hold a telex line that hasn’t worked in years, hoping that when things improve the government will offer fax lines to those holding telex lines.

Even international politics makes day-to-day commerce a challenge. What will happen when the inevitable peace treaty with Israel is signed?

Most analysts say that will be a day of reckoning for the traditional Lebanese businessman. Trade treaties will follow. Competition from Israel for domestic and regional markets will be stiff. European businesses will join Lebanese expatriates in returning to the commercial scene here. Already working on government contracts here are firms from Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Denmark and Poland.

At risk will be the Lebanese merchant mentality that says the only good profit is the big and fast profit, said an American businessman who slips in and out of Beirut despite the U.S. ban on travel to Lebanon. No Lebanese is happy with anything under a 200% profit.

Only a handful of U.S. businesses have held on here. Merrill Lynch, American Express and a few others operate with Lebanese staff. But at the academic level, the U.S. private sector is participating in the reconstruction. Harvard’s School of Architectural Design has scheduled a course devoted to development plans for a 680,000-square-meter landfill in Beirut, the dumping ground for cleared rubble of the old downtown section.

Untouched by war are the twin pillars of Lebanon’s financial system--bank secrecy and unrestricted transfer of foreign currency. Those foundation stones may be enough to support the rebound.