Word: chamoun
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...barricaded mansion in Beirut's Moslem quarter. Two days later street fighting broke out again; an estimated five persons were killed in Beirut and Tripoli. Next day His Beatitude Paul Meouchi, onetime Los Angeles parish priest who is now patriarch of the Maronite Roman Catholic sect to which Chamoun and most Lebanese Christians belong, said in a press conference that the President should "take a trip" abroad and turn over power to Army Chief Brigadier General Fuad Shehab. Otherwise, he warned, the half-Christian, half-Moslem republic of Lebanon might see its civil war turn into a disastrous religious...
...studied in Paris, served as a Socialist Deputy and minister in Beirut, took up Gandhian philosophy after a visit to India in 1951, and last year walked out in disgust from Nasser's Afro-Asian Peoples' Solidarity Conference in Cairo on realizing that it was Communist-run. Chamoun's policies, he said, had caused 'the most reactionary as well as the most progressive forces' to band together in united opposition. 'We have never known such corruption. I myself lost my race for Parliament last year merely because my opponent spent more money buying votes...
Second Thoughts. As the crisis lengthened, the usefulness of all-out U.S. aid to Chamoun's regime became more and more questionable. The U.S. police gear and tanks arriving by plane and ship seemed unlikely to promote order where order finally depends on a balance between religious, social and political forces none of which is strong enough to dominate the country...
Secretary Dulles publicly supported Chamoun by saying that the Lebanese regime had "what seems to us to be serious evidence" of Nasserite interference in its affairs; but the State Department privately hoped that the Lebanese government would not press its complaint before the U.N. asking investigation of United Arab Republic subversion. Cairo, Moscow and half the Middle East press were crying "American intervention." Two of Chamoun's Moslem ministers resigned in protest at what they called a "betraying" appeal to outsiders against a fellow Arab state...
...week's end Beirut reported that Chamoun himself was showing some disposition to call off his U.N. complaint and accept a peacemaking government headed by his fellow Maronite, Army Chief Shehab. If so, the fundamental U.S. objective of maintaining an independent Lebanon, in delicate Moslem-Christian balance, would be better served than by widening the chaos. In the turbulent world of the Middle East, an ally may sometimes help its friends more by not making them too conspicuously dependent on its help...