Syria reportedly resisted diplomatic pressure to pull its antiaircraft missiles out of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley today, seeming to dare a showdown with Israel.
In Jerusalem, the American Ambassador to Israel, Samuel W. Lewis, delivered a note to Prime Minister Menachem Begin saying that the diplomatic efforts to get Syria to remove the Soviet-built surfaceto-air missiles had thus far failed. It asked the Israelis to hold off any military action against the missiles to allow for more time to win Syrian agreement. Officials there said that Israel was expected to agree.
In Washington, Reagan Administration officials said they feared that a situation was developing in which a military confronation between Israel and Syria was becoming inevitable.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam of Syria arrived in Beirut to begin talks with leaders of most of the warring Lebanese factions and government officials in an effort to end the civil strife in Lebanon, which took some 500 lives last month.
There were various expressions of hope that Mr. Khaddam’s talks could lead to a permanent solution to the crisis in this battered land.
The Syrians moved their missiles in last Tuesday, setting them up openly near a main highway and allowing photographs to be taken, after Israeli helicopters shot down two Syrian helicopters involved in fighting against Christian militiamen. Israel supports the Lebanese Christian forces.
The Government newspaper Tishrin said today that Syria would not allow Lebanon to be ”open ground to American imperialists and Zionists for the partition of Lebanon.”
But one diplomat here, close to the international efforts going on behind the scenes to calm the crisis, said that President Hafez al-Assad of Syria, a stubborn and frequently wily man, had little to lose and much to gain by refusing to move the missiles.
Even if Israel attacks the weapons, this diplomat maintained, Mr. Assad will be a winner because the other Arab states will be forced to rally to his side, thus ending his current isolation in the region. Any missiles that may be lost would presumably be replaced eventually by the Russians.
Mr. Khaddam, the Syrian Foreign Minister, arrived at the presidential palace in the foothills just east of Beirut this afternoon for his attempt to end the current violence and solve Lebanon’s political problems.
One potentially critical sticking point was the Syrians’ insistance that the Maronite Catholics must make a statement renouncing their ties with Israel as part of any agreement.
Mr. Khaddam began his talks with perhaps the least powerful force in Lebanon – the Government. His discussions with President Elias Sarkis and Prime Minister Shafik al-Wazzan went on into the night. He is to begin meeting with other elements tomorrow, beginning with the Armenian members of Parliament.
”We now have a golden opportunity to resolve the Lebanese crisis and if we don’t capitalize on it, and if certain elements continue to depend on certain external powers,” said Marwan Hamadeh, a young member of the six-man ministerial committee that drew up the working papers for the meeting, ”a catastrophe will befall us and Lebanon will become another Vietnam.”