Fury in the Isolation Ward

By Strobe Talbott

Lebanon's crisis has made Gaddafi fume at almost everyone

Israel's blitz into Lebanon and its brutal stranglehold on Beirut have aroused doubt, controversy, criticism and apprehension in the U.S. and within Israel itself. But one side effect of the episode is likely to be received as good news in both Washington and Jerusalem. Whatever damage it has done to the long-term interests of the U.S. and Israel, the crisis already seems to have increased the isolation of Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi has close military ties to the Soviet Union, a propensity for sending expeditionary forces elsewhere in Africa (to Uganda and Chad, for example), and an undisguised ambition to radicalize such Third World bodies as the Organization of African Unity and the nonaligned movement. He is, therefore, pre-eminent in the demonology of the Reagan Administration. In a number of offices at the CIA, Gaddafi's picture hangs next to those of Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and Cuban President Fidel Castro in a kind of unholy trinity. An agency official not long ago called Gaddafi "the first among equals, our international public enemy No. 1." The Reagan Administration blames Gaddafi for sponsoring international terrorism (he says he supports only legitimate liberation movements), and even for dispatching hit squads to assassinate the President and other public figures (a charge that Gaddafi flatly denied, and one that seems to have faded for lack of firm evidence). Gaddafi is the only foreign leader whose forces have engaged the U.S. in armed combat during the present Administration (the dogfight in the Gulf of Sidra last August).

But the greatest fear of American policymakers has been that the Arab-Israeli conflict would gradually, or perhaps suddenly, drive other, traditionally moderate Arabs toward Gaddafi's militant banner. U.S. officials are concerned that Gaddafi-ism, as his brand of uncompromising opposition to the existence of any Jewish state in the area is sometimes called, will spread, and along with it his influence.

That nightmare seems, so far at least, not to be coming true. On the contrary, since the Lebanon crisis began two months ago, Gaddafi's relations with almost every Arab state, and a number of non-Arab ones as well, have deteriorated. Tensions have risen between him and Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization, between him and Syria and between him and the Soviet Union.

Last month Gaddafi issued a public message to the Palestinian leaders promising that Libya "will place all of its resources at the disposal of Syria and the Palestinian resistance." Those resources have turned out to be mostly words of encouragement, plus some fraternal advice from Gaddafi: "I advise you to commit suicide rather than to accept disgrace. Your suicide will immortalize the cause of Palestine for future generations. Your blood is the fuel of the revolution. . . Let suicide be the priority. It is the road to victory."

Arafat's reply, in effect, was a very sarcastic "Thanks a lot!" He accused Gaddafi of failing to deliver on past promises of armed assistance. Had those unspecified promises been kept, said the P.L.O. chairman, "the enemy would not have dared to do what he has done." The Lebanon crisis and Arafat's conduct have increasingly provoked Gaddafi to back the more radical Palestinian group, George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Relations between Gaddafi's Libya and Saudi Arabia have always been bad, the archetypal revolutionary vs. the ultra-conservative monarchy. But just as each side seemed to be toning down its rhetoric and inching toward more normal relations, Gaddafi denounced King Fahd as "the pig of the Arabian peninsula" and a "filthy agent of the U.S." Fahd's latest crime, in Gaddafi's view, was to attempt to play mediator in Lebanon.

Libyan officials say that they and their leader are angry at the Soviet Union for limiting its role in the crisis to "words, empty words," and the Libyans are even angry at the Syrians, for not opening a "second front" against the Israelis.

Virtually the whole Arab world, said one top adviser to Gaddafi, "is behaving in a way very close to cowardice." If Libya had its way, all Arab states would unite in sending troops into Lebanon as well as into Syria to prevent the Israelis from invading there. Volunteers would open a new front against Israel from Jordan. There would be a total Arab oil boycott against the U.S., and U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib would be sent packing. The Libyans would also call on the Egyptian people "to destroy all bridges with Israel," meaning abrogate Camp David (a move that would probably send the Israelis back into the Sinai). It is just because Gaddafi has that kind of alternative in mind that he finds himself on the fringes of the Arab world and is likely to stay there.

As for the other war in the region, Gaddafi's wholehearted political support and military assistance to non-Arab Iran against Arab Iraq has complicated his claims to championing the cause of pan-Arabism. It has also made him more suspect than ever among the overwhelmingly Sunni majority, especially given widespread nervousness throughout the Middle East about the Ayatullah Khomeini's militant fanaticism.

Gaddafi was still smarting last week from another setback. He was scheduled to have been made chairman of the Organization of African Unity at a summit meeting in Tripoli. But enough leaders stayed away to deprive him of a quorum and of the vindication he coveted for his unabashedly radical brand of statesmanship.

-- By Strobe Talbott/ Tripoli

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