Syria’s foreign minister, Abdul Halim Khaddam, accused the United States and its allies in the Lebanese multinational peace-keeping force of seeking to restore colonialism in the Middle East.
Addressing the 38th U.N. General Assembly, Khaddam attacked the United States six times for trying to revise colonial expansion in the Middle East and for using Israel to support U.S. strategic interests in the region.
Khaddam was scheduled to meet Secretary of State George Shultz Friday. Khaddam met British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe and Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti Wednesday.
British and French officials left the meetings with Khaddam with the impression Syria will oppose the idea of the United States and its allies building up the existing U.N. Truce Supervisory Organization (UNTSO), which has been patrolling cease-fires in the Middle East since 1948, for use in Lebanon.
The United States and other countries in the multinational peace-keeping force have agreed that the it should not take over the enlarged duties of watching over the Lebanese cease-fire.
Khaddam, referring to ‘the Americans and others,’ said, ‘The aircraft carrier and warships prowling the Mediterranean are but a new modern image of the colonialist and Crusade expeditions to which our Arab nation was exposed in various stages of its histroy.’
‘We are confident our Arab nation will defeat the new invaders who are coming back with their ugly faces and formidable war machines. U.S. intervention on one side in the civil war in Lebanon represents a danger to the region.’
He said it would be wrong for ‘the United States and its allies’ to embroil their people in a war’ and he predicted ‘U.S. involvement in the Middle East would be as ill-fated as it was in Vietnam.’
Neither Shultz nor U.N. representative Jeane Kirkpatrick were in the hall for the Khaddam speech, although there were lower-ranking members of the U.S. delegation seated as Khaddam criticized U.S. policy and its support of Israel.
He described the U.S. forces in Lebanon as ‘the advanced forward base’ of U.S. imperialism ‘which serves the aggressive Israeli aims.’
He said Syria insists on the unconditionalIsraeli withdrawal from all of Lebanon and the scrapping of the Israeli-Lebanese troop withdrawal agreement negotiated by Shultz in May. Damascus has rejected the accord.
He raised the question of expelling Israel from the United Nations ‘because Israel violated its own commitments’ on withdrawal from occupied territories and treatment of the Palestinians.
Failing that, he suggested that the United Nations impose sanctions against Israel.
WORD: has consistently vetoed any sanctions against Israel in the Security Council and the Reagan administration has warned that expulsion of Israel from the Assembly would cause the United States itself to pull out.
The United States supplies 25 per cent of the U.N. budget.