Speculation on Move by Syria Grows as Beirut Clashes Go On

BEIRUT —  Muslim and Christian militias battled in Beirut for the 19th day in a row Thursday, and speculation intensified that Lebanon’s powerful neighbor, Syria, might send in its army to end the violence.

Police said five people were killed and 19 were wounded in fighting that raged through the night and into the morning along Beirut’s dividing Green Line. All the casualties were civilians.

By police count, 108 people have been killed and 543 wounded since the fighting flared April 28.

Mortar shells and rockets crashed into residential areas near the front line. Snipers, firing throughout the day, kept all but one Green Line crossing between Christian East Beirut and the Muslim west closed.

Lebanon’s national coalition government remained paralyzed by a sharp sectarian split over the new wave of bloodletting, which many fear threatens to rekindle Lebanon’s 10-year-old civil war.

Syrian Intervention

Politicians on both sides indicated their interest in asking Syria to break the deadlock. Pro-Syrian Christian leaders called for Syrian intervention Wednesday.

Newspapers said Christian President Amin Gemayel will travel to Damascus within the next two days for a summit meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad.

The independent An Nahar newspaper and As Safir, a leftist daily, said that arrangements for the Gemayel-Assad summit have been hammered out in a flurry of conferences by Lebanese envoys and Syrian officials since Saturday.

The main figure in the Damascus talks is Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam, the architect of Syria’s 1976 military intervention in Lebanon to smother 18 months of Christian-Muslim fighting.

Since then, Syria has maintained about 30,000 troops in eastern and northern Lebanon. The speculation now is that Syria might send its army back to Beirut, which it evacuated in 1982.

Khaddam has conferred with Gemayel’s political adviser, Michel Samaha, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Shia Muslim leader Nabih Berri in the last three days, official reports from Damascus said.

Jumblatt and Berri, allies in the latest war against the Christians, returned to Beirut on Thursday.

Berri told a news conference that Syria has “two conditions for its return to Beirut. First of all, factions must agree to turn over all their light and heavy weapons . . . , and second, they must agree on a basis for reconciliation to avoid having one faction monopolize power.

“Then the (Syrian) deterrent force should come in to safeguard Lebanon’s unity and avoid its partitioning into (sectarian) mini-states.”