Word: jumblatt
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Considering the deep-rooted passions, no one in Beirut at week's end was predicting with much confidence that this latest pause in the struggle would last for long. But many agreed with what was implicit in Jumblatt's confident assertion: that the Moslems were within sight of their basic goal in the war ?overturning the antiquated sectarian system of distributing power that has controlled Lebanon since it gained independence from France...
...newly arrived envoy in Amman, he strapped a pearl-handled pistol to his waist, rode to the palace in an armored personnel carrier and presented his credentials to the King. Brown flew into Beirut last week unarmed and with instructions from Secretary of State Kissinger to make contact with Jumblatt and Franjieh and offer the good offices of the U.S. as mediator. State Department spokesmen carefully explained that Brown was not authorized to deal with Arafat or any other Palestinian leader. Nonetheless, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that informal contacts might be made...
...Moslem leaders (including President Franjieh), the man principally responsible for arranging the freeze was Syrian President Hafez Assad. He was greatly embarrassed by the collapse of the January 23 cease-fire arranged by his Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam. Assad's government launched a diplomatic offensive to get Jumblatt's forces to stop fighting...
Calling attention to their own forces based along the border, the Syrians hinted at intervention. They also cut off Jumblatt's supply line: at one point he complained that the Syrians were denying him 4,000 guns and 7 million rounds of ammunition that had been donated by the Egyptian government and confiscated when they reached Damascus en route to Beirut. Finally, Assad persuaded Arafat to put pressure on Jumblatt to accept another ceasefire. The persuasions contained an implicit warning that if the war continued the Lebanese-based Palestinians might lose Syrian support and supplies...
...diplomatic moves and countermoves produced some strange alliances ?some new, some old. For the past two years Arafat has been at ideological odds with Dr. George Habash, the militantly Marxist head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. But both Habash and Arafat are supporters of Jumblatt, and both felt threatened by Syria's strategy...