Now It's Syria Superstar

With the self-assurance of an imperial proconsul, Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam last week presided over a cease-fire in Lebanon that Damascus had not merely proposed but had imposed. At Beirut's presidential palace, the amiable diplomat--many Lebanese have already begun calling him the "Kissinger of the Arab world"--received one delegation after another from Lebanon's rival political and confessional factions. Meanwhile, a team of Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese officers monitored the cease-fire--the 23rd in the nine-month-old civil war--and managed to restore a measure of relative calm to the strife-torn country. Both the highly visible role played by Khaddam and the participation of Syrians on the truce teams were signs that Damascus has emerged, at least for the moment, as the most effective Arab power in the Middle East.

Enforcing Order. Fighting had raged throughout Lebanon for six weeks when Syrian mediators, led by Khaddam and backed by up to 4,000 troops of the Syrian-trained Palestine Liberation Army, proposed the ceasefire. Under its terms, the P.L.A. was responsible for enforcing order in Moslem areas, while the Lebanese Army and security forces, in cooperation with rightist Christian militias, patrolled Christian sectors of the country. Within a few days, rival groups of gunmen had been separated. Widespread looting stopped after some lawbreakers were shot on sight by the P.L.A. and others were summarily tried and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. At week's end truce violations were limited to a few isolated ambushes and outbursts of gunfire.

Last week Lebanon's Cabinet met--for the first time in 15 days--under Premier Rashid Karami, who had withdrawn his resignation. Civil servants were ordered back to their offices and schools and banks prepared to reopen. Although most Lebanese began breathing easier for the first time in weeks, there were fears that the truce was a fragile one and could again dissolve into fighting. "The country is in de facto partition," warned one Cabinet minister.

Lasting peace will not be achieved until all factions accept long-overdue reforms that will change the unwritten "National Covenant" that gives the Christian minority a disproportionate share of economic and political power in Lebanon. Syria is certain to play an important role in drafting those reforms.

Damascus' imposition of the cease-fire on Lebanon was a personal triumph for Syrian President Hafez Assad. He can now legitimately pose as the protector of the Lebanese Moslems and claim to have prevented an Arab state from destroying itself in a civil war. Moreover, he has acquired some measure of authority over the 400,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon. By using the P.L.A. to stop the fighting, Assad avoided direct Syrian military intervention in Lebanon, which might have triggered an invasion by Israeli troops.

Key Role. The "Syrian windfall in Lebanon," as a State Department official called it, is only the latest step in a Syrian campaign to undercut Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's position as the leading spokesman of the Arab world. Assad outmaneuvered Sadat last summer by refusing to negotiate a new disengagement agreement with Israel over the Golan Heights after Sadat had already signed the Sinai accords. Last autumn Assad balked at renewing the mandate of the United Nations peace-keeping force in the Golan Heights unless the Palestine Liberation Organization was invited to a major Security Council debate on the Middle East.

That debate ended last week with a U.S. veto of a strongly pro-P.L.O. resolution. Although not a member of the Council, Syria played the key role in drafting the resolution, which would have required Israel to withdraw from all territories occupied during the 1967 war, and would have recognized the Palestinians' "right to establish an independent state in Palestine." As expected, Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan cast the U.S.'s 13th veto in the Council's 30-year history, because the resolution would have altered the deliberately vague language of Resolution 242 adopted in 1967, which calls on Israel to withdraw from occupied territories rather than from "all" occupied territories. Washington and Jerusalem interpret 242 to mean that Israel has the right to retain some possession of the occupied areas.

No nation went along with the U.S. in opposing the resolution. France and Japan joined six Third World nations in voting for it; Britain, Sweden and Italy abstained; Libya and China did not participate.

Despite Assad's championship of the Palestinian cause, Syrian domination of Lebanon may prove to be a mixed blessing for the fedayeen. Assad has kept the 17,000-man Palestinian forces inside Syria on a tight rein, denying them the freedom enjoyed by guerrillas in Lebanon. Last week Foreign Minister Khaddam, after a meeting with the Palestine Liberation Organization's Yasser Arafat, gave guarantees to Lebanese Christians that the fedayeen would abide by prior (but mostly ignored) agreements to restrict their military activities within Lebanon. Some observers believe that in future negotiations with Israel, Assad might even promise to restrain the fedayeen from launching terrorist raids in exchange for major Israeli concessions on the Golan Heights.

Diplomatic Success. Any such negotiations are at best in the distant future. For now, U.S. experts fear that Assad may be so flushed with diplomatic success that he will become increasingly intransigent. "He may try to ride things out until the U.S. is ready to take a more sweeping crack at the problem," observed a State Department Middle East expert. This means that Kissinger's step-by-step diplomacy may, for the moment, be dead. Assad has said that Syria will refuse to attend a Geneva conference unless the P.L.O. is also given its own seat; these conditions are unacceptable to Washington and Jerusalem (see following story).

The Syrian President, of course, may decide to exploit his strength by hurrying to the conference table. After all, he seems to want to strike some bargain with Israel. Moreover, he has never joined the so-called "rejection front" of Libya, Iraq and the Palestinians, who refuse to have anything to do with the Israelis. The choice is now Assad's, and never before has a Syrian decision had so potentially great an impact.

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