Lebanese militia leader to seek peace in Syrian talks

publisher: UPI

Publishing date: 1985-10-20

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The leader of Lebanon’s most powerful Christian militia will visit Damascus in a new effort to end the 10-year-old civil war, militia sources said Sunday as new fighting erupted in Beirut.

The Christian Voice of Lebanon radio said at least three shells were fired across the Green Line of wrecked buildings that divides the Christian eastern sector of the capital from the mostly Moslem west. No casualties were reported.

The Syrian trip was being planned by Elie Hobeika, head of the Lebanese Forces’ executive committee, who was to meet in Damascus with Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam in the next two days, sources and newspaper reports said.

It would be the second visit by Hobeika, 28, to Damascus in the past six weeks. The militia leader is trying to revive relations with Syria that have been cool because of his faction’s strong ties with Israel.

Representatives of the Shiite Moslem Amal movement, the Druze Progressive Socialist Party, and the Lebanese Forces reached a tentative accord last Tuesday in Damascus to end the state of war and halt sectarian violence.

It was the first such accord between the three warring factions, now the prinicipal contenders in the conflict.

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and his Amal counterpart, Nabih Berri, would also hold separate talks in Damascus this week with Khaddam, the Syrian official with special responsibility for Lebanese affairs, the sources said.

Lebanese President Amin Gemayel held talks Friday with Syrian president Hafez Assad to explore Syrian-backed plans to end the civil war.

Syria, the main foreign power broker in Lebanon, with 25,000 troops in the nation’s eastern and northern areas, has been sponsoring a series of political meetings among the main rival factions after the abrogation last year of the May 17, 1983, agreement between Lebanon and Israel for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanese territory.

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