U.S. Middle East envoy Robert McFarlane took his peace mission Saturday to intransigent Syria, which toned down its attacks on U.S. policy but still predicted failure for American efforts to get foreign forces out of Lebanon.
To underscore the urgency of McFarlane’s mission, car bombs, grenade attacks, and factional fighting swept through Lebanon in what a police official called a ‘bloody weekend’ that left at least 24 dead and 44 others wounded.
McFarlane met with Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam in Damascus and discussed ‘political developments in the Middle East and the situation in Lebanon,’ state-run Damascus radio said.
McFarlane, replacing Philip Habib whom Syria refused to meet, was not carrying new proposals and was using his initial encounter with Syrian President Hafez Assad and other officials to form plans, U.S. sources said.
But American officials said before McFarlane’s departure from Beirut that they expected ‘substantial talks,’ a view supported by a sudden change in tone from Damascus, expressed in an editorial on the state-controlled radio.
Praising McFarlane, it said he was preceded by reports of his ‘seriousness, determination and decisiveness.’ He has a reputation as a methodical and precise negotiator, a contrast to the emotional Habib.
