Word: syrians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...embattled Christian leader who two weeks ago conditionally agreed to step down. Fran-jieh's replacement had been a major leftist condition for negotiations to end the 13-month-old civil war between Christians and Moslems, which has taken 16,000 lives. But fearing that Elias Sarkis, the Syrian-backed candidate, would win the election, Moslem forces launched a last-ditch effort to prevent the voting...
...rather than moving through the streets. The city's international airport, under Moslem control, became a target for the first time when a dozen mortar rounds crashed into a hangar area, wounding seven and setting a Boeing 707 freighter on fire. Hopes were briefly raised when units of Syrian-controlled Palestine Liberation Army troops took up some buffer positions between Christian and Moslem lines, but artillery continued to whine and crash through the city, and the death toll for the week climbed to nearly...
...intransigence of the Christian rightists had also caused irritation in Damascus. Observed Syrian Information Minister Ahmad Iskander: "If President Assad and Syria did not have the patience of Job, we would have stopped [peacekeeping] efforts long ago." However frustrating the task, Assad is not expected to abandon his efforts in Lebanon. For one thing, he is concerned that more radical Arabs, such as the Iraqis and the Libyans, may make further inroads in a country that Syria would like to keep strictly within its own sphere of influence. An unstable or radical Arab regime in Lebanon would not only increase...
...persuasion, backed by a limited troop presence inside Lebanon. Though White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen last week praised Syria for "playing a constructive role" in Lebanon, Damascus was emphatic in putting down suggestions that Assad had received from Washington a "green light" for greater military intervention. As one Syrian official recently put it, "We only want to be the gendarme...
...shouting match between "brotherly" Moslems disturbed onlookers. In Washington, Secretary of State Kissinger told Congress that "we have been walking through a mine field here." He added: "The Syrian military efforts are getting very close to the borderline" of Israeli tolerance. In Jerusalem, Premier Yitzhak Rabin had a different borderline in mind. He warned that Israel had marked out a "red line" beyond which Syrian forces could not move. Although Rabin refused to pinpoint the line, military observers judged it to be the Litani River, running south and west through southern Lebanon. "If they bring in flak and missiles...