The Beirut government, which asked the Soviet Union Friday to help convince Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon, said an envoy would go to Iraq and North Yemen to seek more Arab backing for the withdrawal pact, state-run Beirut radio said.
In Damascus, state-run Syrian radio said two Syrian envoys carrying messages from President Hafez Assad would tour several Arab countries this weekend to rally support against the accord.
Israel and Lebanon have both said the agreement will be virtually scuttled if Syria does not remove its soldiers.
Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam stressed his country will neither accept the Israeli-Lebanese agreement nor welcome Habib because it had ‘nothing to discuss with him.’
Habib, whose request to meet with Syrian leaders was rebuffed Tuesday, returned to the Middle East Wednesday to try again to negotiate a full withdrawal of foreign troops from Lebanon.
‘We shall never change, not in a week, not in a month. We will talk about nothing but banning the implementation of the agreement,’ Khaddam, one of Syria’s most outspoken leaders, told Monte Carlo Radio Friday.
‘If Egypt shared common borders with Syria, a war would have erupted between us due to the (1979) Camp David (Israeli-Egyptian) treaty. Much more links us to Lebanon,’ Khaddam said in a separate interview with a Lebanese weekly magazine.
‘And we will use all which is in our capacity to thwart this agreement — an accord more dangerous than Camp David,’ he said in an apparent Syrian threat of military force to block the agreement.
In Washington, the United States formally ended its embargo on selling 75 advanced F-16 fighter-bombers to Israel. The Reagan administration held up the $2.7 billion saleafter Israel’s invasion of Lebanon June 6.
Khaddam rejected recent statements made by U.S. officials saying Syria might enter the peace negotiations, which appeared to cement Syria’s unwillingness to withdraw its troops.
Khaddam said the Israeli-Lebanese agreement infringes on Lebanese security by prohibiting Beirut from establishing a modern air defense system or deploying forces in the strategic Barouk Mountains.
