Back in Balance

The trolley cars were running in Beirut again, though it was a bumpy ride through streets torn and pitted by five months of civil war. Joyous bonfires were lit, the shops rolled up their shutters, the barricades began to come down. Shots rang out, but only in celebration; peace had come at last to Lebanon.

For nearly a month there had been a fresh wave of kidnapings and killings. Though the fighting that the U.S. Marines had been sent in to discourage had presumably ended with the election of an above-the-battle general, Fuad Chehab, as President, it quickly broke out anew. Chehab's choice for Premier, a pro-Nasser rebel named Rashid Karami, had loaded his Cabinet with Nasserites. The precarious fifty-fifty balance of Christians and Moslems, which alone has kept Lebanon tranquil in the past, was broken again. This time it was the Christians who became the rebels.

But as the fighting went on, one man among the Christians worked for peace. Lawyer Raymond Edde, 45, the son of a former Lebanese President, headed what he called a Third Force movement (known to U.S. newsmen, in its ineffective days, as the "Third Farce"). One of Lebanon's most able and respected politicians, Edde ran unsuccessfully for the presidency against General Chehab. When trouble started again, he proposed a "save the nation" Cabinet of four leaders of the embattled factions. To offset Karami's Nasserism, he proposed as deputy premier a fellow Maronite Roman Catholic who wants no part of Arab nationalism. A moderate Moslem was picked as No. 3 man, and Edde himself as No. 4.

On this formula all hands last week agreed. The Chamber of Deputies, which only a few days before had threatened to topple the Karami government, gave the four-man Cabinet a unanimous vote of confidence. As the news spread, street fighters and terrorists put down their arms. A delegation from Beirut's Moslem rebels even paid a courtesy coffee call on their former enemies at the headquarters of the Christian Phalange. The U.S. embassy declared the situation so improved that it was safe for American dependents to return to the country. The new Cabinet rescinded an earlier order expelling Nasser's ambassador from Beirut. The gesture reflected Lebanon's new-style neutralism --a desire to live in harmony with both the West and with Nasser, though becoming an ally of neither. And that was quite all right with the U.S., whose troops can hardly wait to leave.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.