Druze Leader, Shias Urge Overthrow of Gemayel

BEIRUT —  Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and a radical Shia Muslim group said Sunday that Lebanon’s Christian President Amin Gemayel will be overthrown and the country “Islamicized.”

In separate attacks, Jumblatt, a dissident government minister, said all groups and sects will rise up to overthrow Gemayel’s “despotic and hated regime,” and the Hezbollah (Party of God), a Shia group, pledged to establish Iranian-style revolutionary Islamic rule.

“Let him remember that his palace at Baabda is no protection,” Jumblatt said of Gemayel in a speech. “The Shah of Iran was a thousand times greater, and he fell when a hungry people revolted.

“The Lebanese people, with their groups and communities united, will do the same and break this despotic and hated regime.”

Deteriorating Climate

The speech emphasized Lebanon’s deteriorating political climate and followed bitter charges by Gemayel and Premier Rashid Karami that Jumblatt and other militia leaders are responsible for economic crisis and political anarchy.

There is no known link between Hezbollah and Jumblatt, head of the Druze-led Progressive Socialist Party and its powerful militia. But political analysts said the two statements indicate major trouble ahead for Gemayel.

The statement by Hezbollah declared allegiance to Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and expressed its intention to establish Islamic fundamentalist rule in Lebanon.

Although denying it would impose Islamic rule by force, the manifesto published in newspapers Sunday said “we do not hide out commitment to Islamic rule and we call on all people to chose this regime.”

“We are going to fight abomination to its roots,” it said.

Threatened to Leave Cabinet

Jumblatt, whose Druze are an offshoot Islamic sect, has threatened to leave the Cabinet and has long boycotted it, citing bad relations with Gemayel and fear for his life if he goes to sessions at the presidential palace.

His party works closely with Amal, the mainstream Shia political movement and militia that accepts a continued Christian role in a reformed multi-confessional state.

But Jumblatt’s speech, marking a Druze militia victory over pro-Gemayel troops last year, appeared to reach out to Shia radicals whose strength is believed growing at Amal’s expense.

Meanwhile, guerrillas exploded a 33-pound bomb in southern Lebanon on Sunday, killing an Israeli soldier, the first to die since Israel’s completion of the first stage of its troop withdrawal from Lebanon, army officials said.

Detonated by Cable

The Israeli army said the bomb was detonated by cable as an Israeli army convoy passed on a road near the village of Bazouriye, four miles east of the port of Tyre. One soldier was killed and three were wounded.

The bombing came less than 24 hours after Israeli forces abandoned their front line at the Awwali River, 24 miles south of Beirut, and retreated south to a new line beginning at the Litani River and curving northeast to the Bekaa Valley.

The withdrawal marked the end of the first stage of a three-part plan to bring home Israel’s estimated 20,000 occupation troops in Lebanon. Israel invaded in June, 1982, to crush the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In Israel, there was a sense of relief nationwide over Saturday’s pullback. Israeli newspapers ran banner headlines on the withdrawal, their front pages carrying photographs of soldiers talking with loved one from field telephones.

“We’re Home at Long Last,” read the headline of the afternoon paper Maariv. “Home From Sidon,” declared its rival, Yediot Aharonot.

In the second pullout stage, troops will abandon positions facing Syrian forces in eastern Lebanon. The third phase will bring them to Israel’s northern border, leaving a six-mile deep strip patrolled by the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army and token Israeli units.

No time has been set for the final stage, but military sources said it could be completed by mid-summer.

Muhammad Ali Going Home

In Beirut, former world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali said Sunday that he will return to the United States after a brief mission to try to rescue four kidnaped Americans. Ali said it was unlikely that the kidnapers would reveal themselves to him.

“I do not expect those holding the hostages to come out and to make themselves known to the public or to myself or to anyone else,” he told a hastily called news conference.

He appealed to the kidnapers on behalf of the four Americans and a missing Saudi Arabian diplomat “to let these people go free.”

Ali, who converted to Islam in 1964, came to Beirut on Saturday hoping to locate the captives, all of whom disappeared in mostly Muslim West Beirut in the last year.

He said he was not sure exactly when he will leave Beirut.