Syria’s Foreign Minister said here today after ‘seven hours of talks with Lebanese leaders that the eight‐year‐old agreement regulating the presence of Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon would be put into full effect soon
The minister, Abdel Halim Khaddam, said that Lebanon’s President, Elias Sarkis, and the Syrian Government would do everything to put the Cairo agreement of 1969 into effect “as a guarantee to both the Lebanese and the Palestinians.”
He did not elaborate, but according to political sources here Syria has devised a compromise formula that would seek to meet the demands of Lebanese right‐wing Christian leaders by demilitarizing Palestinian camps in the Beirut area while allowing the Palestinians to maintain armed forces in the south. Syria, however, is said by these sources to have agreed with the Palestinians to delay substantial movement toward applying the accord until the fall, when the positions of the new Israeli Government and the United States on a resumption of the Middle East peace conference might be clearer.
Mr. Khaddam, who is also Deputy Prime Minister of Syria, met with President Sar kis and other Lebanese leaders to coordinate policies on security, the Palestinian question and other problems confronting Lebanon more than six months after the Syrian‐dominated Arab League peacekeeping force enforced a truce in the Lebanese civil war.
Plans were discussed for a meeting between President Sarkis and President Hafez al‐Assad of Syria later this month with the aim of bringing about a viable political solution of Lebanon’s two‐year old crisis.
Syria tried to promote a political solution to the Lebanese crisis in February 1976, when Suleiman Franjieh, then the Lebanese President, and his Prime Minis ter, Rashid Karami, went to Damascus and returned with what was called the Constitutional Document revising Lebanon’s political system. The Syrian‐inspired document, however, was opposed by most of Lebanon’s political groups and had to be shelved.
This time the Syrians have gone about their mediation in another manner. Instead of drafting reform programs and trying to win the support of different Lebanese political groups, they are trying to obtain broad national support for the Lebanese President and whatever program he works out with their backing.
Leaders of the different factions in the Lebanese civil war have been paying visits to Damascus and all have returned with public expressions of satisfaction. Leaders of the Palestine Liberation Or ganization reportedly received assurances that the Syrians would not force them to disarm.
The Cairo accord, whose terms have never officially been disclosed, called for bases for Palestinians in Lebanon but also Lebanese controls over their operations. Application of its terms has been delayed by differing interpretations of them, and the Lebanese right‐wing Christians have charged that the Palestinians in Lebanon have behaved as if they operated a state within a state.
