Nearly All Together Now

By Pico Iyer

All across Europe, Libyans suddenly found themselves under diplomatic fire last week. West Germany told more than half the 41 representatives stationed at Libya's People's Bureau in Bonn that they had seven days to leave the country. Britain deported 22 Libyan students suspected of activism and informed more than 300 others that they would have to leave shortly. Spain demanded that eleven Libyans quit the country. The Italians arrested a former Libyan diplomat for plotting to kill U.S. Ambassador to Rome Maxwell Rabb and announced a 20% cut in Libya's diplomatic corps. And the French expelled four Libyans, while empowering gendarmes to conduct spot searches of suspicious-looking young Arabs.

Thus did the shadow war against the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi and the terrorists it sponsors move to a diplomatic front. Meeting for the third time in just eight days, the twelve nations of the European Community voted to expel all Libyan diplomats beyond the "minimum necessary" and to curtail the movements of those who remained. They further agreed that a Libyan declared persona non grata in one country would be unwelcome in all.

Just as important as the diplomatic offensive was the fact that the Western allies presented an almost united front. Only one week earlier, when Washington mounted a nighttime air strike on Libya, its most devastating bombing attack since Viet Nam, the U.S. had been actively supported by none of its European friends except British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Rifts in the alliance still remain, as evidenced by the European Community's refusal to close the People's Bureaus altogether, which Washington and London had urged (see following story). Nonetheless, the diplomatic assault on Libyans suggested that these differences are not insurmountable. "People have been coming to share our views on terrorism, and we see more and more actions put alongside the ideas," said Secretary of State George Shultz. "I personally take heart from that fact."

Healing the rupture still further will be among the foremost priorities of President Reagan next week, when he meets in Tokyo with the heads of six other leading industrial nations at the annual economic summit. Even France, which had previously opposed the inclusion of terrorism on the agenda for the economic meetings, has now agreed to discussions. Reagan's rallying cry will probably run along the lines of a motto that has recently become one of his favorites, a maxim coined by the 18th century British conservative Edmund Burke: "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one."

In response to the concerted campaign by their antagonists, Libya and its friends quickly mounted a counteroffensive. Gaddafi called Reagan a "new Nazi," and a Libyan official claimed that bombing attacks in Europe were being prepared by CIA agents and their Israeli colleagues to make his country look bad. Within 24 hours of that unlikely charge, an explosive went off in central London, outside a six-story building where both British Airways and American Express maintain offices. Luckily, the detonation came in the quiet moments before dawn. Had it occurred a few hours later, said the police, it would have caused "horrific damage." Authorities have so far been unable to identify those responsible.

One day later, another rash of terrorist attacks broke out. Two bombs were planted inside a building in central Vienna; only one exploded, however, and it produced no casualties. An American diplomat was shot in the North Yemen town of San'a, though by week's end he seemed likely to survive. In the southeastern French city of Lyons, a British regional director of the American firm Black & Decker was shot twice in the head. And on Saturday, in the same city, a bomb was set off at the local American Express office. While none of the attacks were necessarily mounted by Libyans, or even by Libyan sympathizers, all suggested that a new fury of terrorist activity had been unleashed.

In Beirut, too, supporters of Gaddafi seemed keen to show off their thirst for vengeance. An extremist group called the Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims sent a four-minute videotape to the Beirut daily AnNahar showing a blindfolded man dangling from a scaffold. The victim appeared to be Alex Collett, 64, a British journalist who had been kidnaped 13 months ago. A statement accompanying the tape claimed that Collett had been executed in answer to the American air attack, as had three hostages who were found shot in Beirut a week earlier.

Nothing has yet been heard of the five remaining American hostages in Lebanon. Washington sources speculate that the Americans are being held not by pro-Libyan extremists, but by members of Islamic Jihad, a pro-Iranian organization that is trying to secure the release of 17 imprisoned Arab terrorists in Kuwait. Islamic Jihad apparently considers the American hostages, while alive, a useful bargaining chip. Anxious to take no chances, however, both Washington and London evacuated dozens of their citizens from West Beirut last week, leaving only about 65 Westerners in the bloodstained Muslim-held area of the city.

Meanwhile, the new spirit of international cooperation in the fight against terrorism began to bear fruit. Soon after apprehending Nezar Hindawi, a Palestinian reportedly carrying a Jordanian passport, on suspicion of attempting to blow up an El Al plane leaving London's Heathrow Airport on April 17, British authorities advised their counterparts in Berlin to arrest another Palestinian named Ahmed Nawaf Mansur Hasi. Inside Hasi's apartment, West German detectives found what appeared to be a sketch of the La Belle discotheque, where an explosion three weeks earlier had killed two people and left 230 wounded. They also discovered that Hasi was Hindawi's brother, that he had visited Libya at least once since moving to Berlin in 1975, and that even though unemployed, he was inexplicably in possession of large amounts of American dollars.

Despite the Administration's tough policy toward Libya, its position on other countries linked to terrorism, particularly Syria and Iran, sometimes appeared confused. In an interview with Washington columnists, President Reagan seemed to indicate that the U.S. was ready to strike against those countries if it had evidence tying them to terrorist acts. In fact, evidence gathered by British officials in the thwarted El Al bombing has pointed toward Syrian involvement. Damascus, however, maintains a mutual friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, which means that an attack on Syria could result in a superpower face-off. Though Administration officials later insisted that Reagan's remark had been misinterpreted , their statements left the impression that the U.S. had one standard for Libyan terrorism and another for atrocities perpetrated by stronger and less isolated countries.

Even in the fight against Libya, not all the West European allies were yet of one mind. Greece, for example, continues to maintain that it has not been shown "tangible proof of Gaddafi's hand in recent terrorist attacks. Though persuaded at last to support the European Community resolution, the Greeks have so far refused to expel any Libyans. That leaves 42 of Libya's so-called diplomats in Athens, as against two Greek envoys in Tripoli. "We want to begin a dialogue with Libya," said one Greek government official, "which is more than can be said for the Americans."

More vexing to the U.S. is the position of its moderate Arab allies, who found themselves compelled by the air raid to rally behind their Libyan brothers. "The Arabs are more upset with the way the U.S. went about punishing Gaddafi than with the fact they did it," says one European diplomat at the U.N. "They would have preferred less obtrusive means." One possible gesture of conciliation that may be discussed at the Tokyo summit would be for Europe to enlist all other North African nations in the fight against terrorism. Explained one top Italian official: "Rather than allowing Gaddafi to separate America from Western Europe, we want to split Gaddafi from the rest of the Arab world."

While the sudden air strike strained relations among America's allies, Libya was equally at odds with a few of its friends. "The Kremlin got some real heat last week from its Arab allies for not showing more support for Gaddafi," said a Western diplomat in Moscow. To correct that impression perhaps, Pravda printed an interview with the maverick Libyan last week, in which he gave lavish thanks to Party Chief Mikhail Gorbachev for his support. Nevertheless, the Soviets remain wary about attaching themselves too closely to a Libyan regime that is mercurial at best. Moscow zestfully pounced on the opportunity to denounce Washington's "barbaric act of terrorism," adding that the U.S. had lost not one plane in the raid, as claimed, but at least four. For all the rhetoric, however, Soviet officials conspicuously refrained from ruling out a Reagan-Gorbachev summit later this year.

Only in Libya did passions seem as undivided as ever last week. Though rumors that Gaddafi was now part of a five-man ruling junta appeared to be unfounded, the colonel did seem shaken by the attack. Yet even as life in Tripoli returned to normal, so too did its regime's posturings. In the hope of milking their unusual status as victims for all its propaganda value, the Libyans posted grisly photographs of civilians, many of them children, killed by the raid. They also treated foreign journalists to carefully controlled tours of nonmilitary areas that had been damaged, they said, by American bombs.

One evening, the reporters were unexpectedly herded onto buses and driven to the site of the colonel's bombed-out home. There, bathed in moonlight and flanked by two recently wounded sons, sat Gaddafi's wife Safia. Clutching a crutch as her silver-trimmed black robe billowed in the stiff breeze, the usually private woman vowed to kill with her own hands the pilot who had shattered her house and to pursue eternal vengeance on all Americans "unless they give Reagan the death sentence." For all its staginess, the eerie scene was another reminder that despite last week's precautions, the madness of terrorism is far from over. --By Pico Iyer. Reported by Dean Fischer/Tripoli, with other bureaus

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Tripoli, other bureaus