Word: chieftains
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...more than a week, the durable chieftain and some 4,000 diehard supporters fought off a savage offensive by an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Syrian-backed guerrillas in and around the northern port city of Tripoli. According to Abu Mousa, leader of the rebel faction that mounted the assault, it was meant only to persuade Arafat to enter a "dialogue of reform" with P.L.O. dissidents who oppose his policies. The battle, in reality, was nothing less than a crude move by Syria to squelch Arafat once and for all and seize control of the P.L.O. Faced with...
Casualty figures were sketchy, but at least several hundred guerrillas and civilians were killed and hundreds more wounded. The mayor and other local leaders pleaded with Arafat to halt the fighting, but they stopped short of publicly asking the P.L.O. chieftain to leave the city. The Gulf Cooperation Council, made up of Saudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf states, dispatched a delegation to Damascus. A four-day cease-fire was worked out, promptly broke down, then was patched together again. Rashid Karami, a former Lebanese Prime Minister who lives in Tripoli, asked Arafat to quit the area and "leave...
...invited him to send a delegate to the conference; it was the first formal contact between the two countries since last spring, when Gemayel earned Assad's enmity by signing a troop withdrawal accord with Israel. On the other hand, the Progressive Socialist Party, led by Druze Chieftain Walid Jumblatt, issued a fresh set of conditions for the talks, including a complete halt to cease-fire violations and a lifting of the nightly curfew in Beirut. Jumblatt himself hinted that the talks might break up over a dispute as picky as the seating. Before leaving for Switzerland, Jumblatt...
...conference of national reconciliation. In addition to President Amin Gemayel, the dozen invitees include Camille Chamoun, head of the Christian Lebanese Front; Pierre Gemayel, the President's father and founder of the right-wing Christian Phalange; the leaders of the Syrian-backed National Salvation Front (including Druze Chieftain Walid Jumblatt); Nabih Berri of the Amal Shi'ite militia; and former Prime Minister Saeb Salam, a Sunni Muslim. Both Syria and Saudi Arabia will be allowed to send observers...
...fighting last week was not simply the result of sectarian rivalries. It was a show of force, designed to win a larger share of power in Lebanon's political patchwork, by the Druze, a small and esoteric sect with roots in Islam. Last month Walid Jumblatt, Druze chieftain and leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, helped organize a National Salvation Front with the deliberate aim of opposing Gemayel. The front struck an alliance with Syria and demanded that Gemayel renounce the May 17 agreement according to which Israel would withdraw its troops if Lebanon agreed to security and political...