Word: chamoun
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Late that morning the Secretary-General visited President Camille Chamoun for 45 minutes, and silently took notes on what the President had to say. Reportedly, Chamoun wanted a U.N. force of several thousand to seal off his Syrian border against further United Arab Republic infiltration. Hammarskjold gave Chamoun no answer and would not even talk to rebel leaders. Instead, he stuck rigidly to his mandate to set up a group to watch the border...
What was the shooting about? Lebanon's Moslem rebels, whose leaders shouted at the outset that their aim was simply to keep President Chamoun from changing the constitution and running for a second term, fought right on after the government pledged that Chamoun would step down when his six-year term ended in September. Chamoun, confident that he could always count on U.S. aid, refused to compromise further...
Though he represents the Christian half of the nation, which has held the balance of power on the Levantine coast since the days of the Crusaders, Camille Chamoun cannot appeal for a defiance of Moslems in a way that a homogeneous state such as Israel can. Chamoun stands instead for that Lebanese tradition that turned its divisions to another sort of strength, the tradition of religious tolerance and political balance that built up commercial prosperity and cultural progress for Christians and Moslems alike. Chosen President of his country by the tradition that assigns that office to a Roman Catholic...
...first was to settle the affair among the Lebanese themselves. Last week, pressed to replace his ineffectual army commander with one who would turn all guns on the rebels, President Chamoun argued that for Lebanon's brigade-size army to take the offensive would be to risk a defeat "which would be fatal to the morale of the army and the people...
...enough to seal off Lebanon's borders. Nasser has been happy enough to accept just such a U.N. Emergency Force to seal his Palestine frontier since the Israeli withdrawal of 1957. Such U.N. assistance might stabilize the little country long enough for the rebels to stop fighting, for Chamoun to serve out his lawful term, and for a new President to take office unburdened by the legacy of hate and dedicated to restoring Lebanon to its old place at the middle of the Middle East...