Moscow Loses Its Immunity

By Michael S. Serrill.

Like other communiques from the shadowy Islamic Jihad, the chilling message arrived in a brown paper envelope at the offices of the Beirut newspaper An- Nahar. American Hostage William Buckley, said a long typewritten statement, had been "tried and executed" to avenge the Palestinians and Tunisians killed in the Israeli raid on Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis. Buckley, 57, was a political officer at the U.S. embassy when he was kidnaped on his way to work on March 16, 1984.

The report of Buckley's death was still unconfirmed at week's end, but it dashed any hopes that he and five other Americans held hostage by Shi'ite extremists might soon be released unharmed. The announcement came only five days after the U.S.S.R. for the first time fell victim to Beirut's endemic lawlessness. Terrorists abducted four Soviet diplomats from their cars in separate West Beirut incidents and later shot one of them dead. It was the first confirmed killing among the more than 30 foreigners kidnaped in Beirut for political reasons in the past 18 months. At least 17 remain missing.

Islamic Jihad initially took responsibility for the Soviet kidnapings too. But then anonymous callers claiming to represent the Islamic Liberation Organization, a group previously unknown, told Western news agencies that they were to blame. Within hours, Polaroid photos of the four Soviets, guns held to their heads, were delivered to news organizations. The kidnapers demanded an immediate end to the fighting in Tripoli between Tawheed, a Sunni Muslim Fundamentalist group, and several Syrian-supported militias. The terrorists seemed to be targeting the Soviet Union because it supports Syria with large amounts of military aid.

Syria immediately sought assistance from its allies in Beirut to secure the release of the hostages. On Wednesday an anonymous caller phoned Western news agencies with word that one of the Soviets had been killed. "We have carried out God's sentence against one of the hostages," he said, "and we shall execute the others, one after another, if the atheistic campaign against Islamic Tripoli does not stop." Another caller warned that the Soviet embassy in Beirut would be blown up if it was not evacuated within 48 hours. A short time later, a passerby found the bloodstained body of Consular Secretary Arkadi Katakov, 32, a gaping bullet wound in his head, near a bombed-out sports stadium in Beirut.

The Soviets were outraged. The news agency TASS condemned the Katakov killing as an "atrocity that cannot be pardoned." Israel, TASS added, was indirectly responsible because it was the "prime cause of internal Lebanese strife." In Paris, where Mikhail Gorbachev was meeting with French officials, a Kremlin spokesman said that the Soviet leader was doing "everything possible" to free the three remaining hostages.

The State Department quickly condemned the Katakov killing, saying that "there is no place in international discourse for this kind of act." It was a correct if somewhat magnanimous gesture. The Soviet Union has never condemned the kidnaping of American citizens by terrorists, preferring to suggest that U.S. travails in Lebanon were the result of Washington's misguided policies.

Tawheed and the pro-Syrian militias have been fighting in the northern port for the past two years, but the battle for Tripoli that broke out on Sept. 15 has been the most destructive. Since then, entire neighborhoods have been razed in house-to-house fighting and by the relentless pounding of Syrian artillery. More than 550 people have been killed, and half of the city's 500,000 citizens have fled. The Soviet kidnapings occurred just as the black- scarved Tawheed fighters seemed in danger of being overrun by the Syrian- backed factions.

Syria's hostility toward Tawheed is rooted partly in the group's close ties to Yasser Arafat's P.L.O., which Syrian President Hafez Assad is determined to prevent from gaining a new foothold in Lebanon. In addition, in its bid to pacify Lebanon and strengthen President Amin Gemayel's authority, Syria wants to reduce the power of religion-based militias like Tawheed.

By Friday a tenuous cease-fire had taken hold in Tripoli, based on a nine- point peace plan worked out in Damascus by representatives of the rival Muslim militia groups. The meetings were brokered by the government of Iran, which is ( friendly with both Tawheed and the Syrians. The plan calls for the total disarmament of all militias under the supervision of the Syrian army, which will head a security committee that will assume control of Tripoli. Whether the cease-fire was the result of Soviet pressure on the Syrians was difficult to establish.

Still, the Soviets were taking no chances. On Friday they evacuated more than 100 embassy dependents and nonessential staff to Damascus, where they were to be flown back to Moscow. The bus and truck convoy that transported the frightened Soviets was guarded by heavily armed Lebanese Communist and Druze militiamen. A well-informed source in Beirut said that the Soviets may have trained some Druze fighters and now have a sizable KGB station in Mukhtara, the mountain home of Druze Chieftain Walid Jumblatt.

Whether Moscow's latest experience would inspire a belated interest in combatting terrorism on a global level was uncertain. It is more likely that small radical groups will be further encouraged to achieve their aims by launching attacks on the citizens of superpowers.

With reporting by John Borrell/Cairo