Beirut to Tighten Security at Its Airport

BEIRUT —  The Lebanese government announced measures Thursday to strengthen security at the Beirut airport and said it will protest at the United Nations over the U.S. effort to isolate the airfield from international airline traffic.

A government statement said the airport security measures will also include building a fence around the perimeter of the airfield, the diversion of cars away from the main terminal building and an effort to refuse armed gunmen access to the main terminal.

It said the measures were ordered by Nabih Berri, the justice minister in Lebanon’s shaky Cabinet, and Walid Jumblatt, the nation’s transport minister. Militias controlled by the two men patrol the airport area.

Berri’s Shia Muslim militia Amal took control of most of the 39 American hostages and negotiated their release, which was achieved Sunday.

“We have set up earth mounds around the airport last (Wednesday) night,” said Khaled Saab, deputy director of the airport. “Cars are kept 200 meters (218 yards) from the terminal building.”

The plan calls for reinforcing Lebanese army and police units now assigned there to carry out the new security procedures.

Similar efforts in the past have had little result. Gunmen from Lebanon’s numerous militias have ignored law enforcement officials and wandered freely through the terminal and onto the runways.

Officials said President Amin Gemayel held crisis talks with top economic and military aides Thursday over the American threat to arrange a boycott of the airport.

Gemayel’s administration ordered Rashid Fakhoury, Lebanon’s U.N. ambassador, to protest the U.S. campaign as “unjustifiably hostile,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

It said Fakhoury would deliver a protest note to the U.N. secretariat in New York to be distributed as an official document to the 15 members of the Security Council, but would not ask for a council meeting.

Gemayel met for three hours with top army and police commanders, Defense Minister Adel Osseiran, Interior Minister Joseph Skaf and Economy Minister Victor Kassir.

Fuad Turk, a Foreign Ministry undersecretary, called in the ambassadors of Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Yemen on Thursday to ask for help against the U.S. measures, and more meetings will follow, a ministry statement said.

The Reagan Administration said Monday it has undertaken “legal action and diplomatic steps” to close the airport to international traffic as a result of the TWA hijacking, charging that the facility is a breeding ground for terrorism. On Wednesday, Britain joined the call for a ban on flights to and from Beirut.

Berri, on Wednesday, said he will seek “compensation for the material losses Lebanon will suffer” as a result of the U.S. crackdown.

“In my capacity as justice minister,” Berri said he will try to persuade the Lebanese government to take the United States to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Meanwhile, the militant Shia group Hezbollah (Party of God), believed by many to have carried out the hijacking June 14, charged in a statement Thursday that the United States is preparing “military aggression against our oppressed people.”