MOSCOW — Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam of Syria, which relies on the Soviet Union for arms, held talks with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko on the crisis in Lebanon and the fate of embattled PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
The Tass news agency said the two men Thursday called for Arab unity and blamed the deterioration in Lebanon on ‘the sinister, aggresssive plans of the United States and Israel.’
‘By deliberately kindling the internal Lebanese conflict, the United States is seeking to escalate and consolidate its military presence in that country and turn it into a stronghold to exert pressure on Syria and other Arab countries,’ Tass said.
Moscow has heavily resupplied Syria since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 destroyed most of Syria’s Soviet-made anti-aircraft missiles.
No confirmed Soviet-Syrian meeting has taken place this year, although unconfirmed reports from Beirut said Syrian President Hafez Assad made a secret visit to Moscow in May.
‘They’ve been resupplying Syria in a big way, to the point where Syria appears to be leading them (the Soviets) around by the nose,’ a Western diplomat said.
He said the Soviets could be demanding an explanation of Syrian policy, which has been to supply arms to a radical faction of the PLO that has besieged the Arafat forces in northern Lebanon.
The diplomat said the Soviets don’t want to see Arafat disappear from the scene, but just to be weakened.
‘They wanted to take him down a notch,’ the diplomat said. ‘He has international standing and they would have less control over a more radical PLO group that replaced him.’
