Playing a Dangerous Game

By William E. Smith

Supported by Moscow, Syria backs away from its promise to leave Lebanon

"No war is possible without Egypt, and no peace is possible without Syria." --Henry Kissinger

Sure enough, it was Syria's turn, backed by the Soviet Union, to block the withdrawal of foreign forces from Lebanon. After five months of negotiations, the U.S. had finally extracted an agreement from Israel and Lebanon for a removal of Israel's 30,000 troops in Lebanon. But the deal was based on a simultaneous withdrawal of Syrian and Palestine Liberation Organization forces. When U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz flew to the Syrian capital of Damascus, capping two weeks of shuttle diplomacy that had brought about the Israeli-Lebanese accord, he learned that Syrian President Hafez Assad had a long list of objections.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Elie Salem heard about those objections firsthand when he flew to Damascus late last week, hoping at the very least to talk the Syrians into holding discussions on the subject. He got nowhere. On his return to Beirut, Salem declared gloomily, "We know that President Assad will not accept the agreement." Undeterred, the Lebanese government unanimously approved the accord with Israel the next day.

The Syrians appeared to have embarked on a dangerous game. In the past two months, they have sent an additional 10,000 troops into the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, increasing their strength to nearly 50,000. At the same time, P.L.O. commandos have slipped back into northern Lebanon, swelling their ranks from 8,000 to at least 10,000. Among them: P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat, who in his first trip back to Lebanon since his forced departure from Beirut last summer reportedly spent a day visiting guerrilla units in the Bekaa Valley. The Syrian war machine, shattered by Israel during last year's righting in Lebanon, has been restocked with bigger and better equipment that requires the presence of 4,800 to 6,000 Soviet military advisers and technicians. In what many diplomats saw as a blatant attempt to heighten tension in the area, the Soviets ostentatiously removed 110 diplomatic dependents from Beirut, as if to indicate that they feared an impending conflict.

The U.S. acknowledged the increase in Syrian and P.L.O. troop strength in Lebanon. Said Shultz after his return to Washington: "First of all, it is a violation of the agreement under which the P.L.O. evacuated Beirut. Second, it is an unwelcome development. We want them to be moving out, not in." In the meantime, the State Department issued a list of statements in which Syria had promised to get out of Lebanon as soon as the Israelis did. On Feb. 14, for example, Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam told his French counterpart, Claude Cheysson, that "Syria would withdraw its forces from Lebanon if the Israelis withdrew their troops." U.S. diplomats note that Syrian officials have repeatedly said the same thing to them in private.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir told the Knesset last week that if Syria did not pull its troops out of Lebanon now, "Israel will be free to act according to its interests." He meant that Israel would leave its troops in Lebanon as long as it saw fit, perhaps concentrating them in more defensible positions in the southern part of the country. By late last week most of the "clarifications" of the agreement that Israel had demanded had been sorted out, paving the way for a signing some time this week.

Most U.S. analysts played down the significance of reports that the Syrians and, by implication, the Soviets were preparing for war. Said a senior U.S. diplomat in Washington: "We think it's bluster and bluff to scare the hell out of Lebanon not to ratify the agreement with Israel, no more than that." A Western diplomat in Moscow noted that there was no sign that the Soviets had evacuated any dependents from Damascus. That, he added, was "the important thing."

The U.S. is convinced that Syria, even with its new Soviet-supplied equipment, could not win a shooting war with Israel, and, moreover, that it could not profit diplomatically from engaging in such a war. Nor does the U.S. see any signs that Israel might be preparing a pre-emptive strike, at least not yet. The Israelis are concerned about the military buildup in Syria. But they are also worried about the risk of greater casualties in Lebanon, and they are particularly interested at the moment in patching up their relations with the U.S. Indeed, suggests a Middle East specialist in Washington, a limited increase in tension may well bring Israel some unexpected political benefits on Capitol Hill. Last week the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to add $300 million to the Reagan Administration's request for $550 million in military grants to Israel in 1984. Only a few days earlier, the Administration had announced that it was ready to lift the ban, imposed after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon last June, on the sale of 75 F-16 jet fighters to Israel.

What the U.S. fears most in the current situation is an accidental conflict. Says former National Security Council Member William Quandt, now a Brookings Institution fellow: "This does not appear to be the kind of deliberate buildup that we saw in anticipation of the 1973 war. But the danger is that it will be like 1967, when there was no real intent to go to war, but tensions rose and rose to the point where no one could find a way to back down." Declared State Department Spokesman Alan Romberg last week: "We have repeatedly noted that with Israeli and Syrian forces juxtaposed in a tense situation, there is the persistent threat of renewed hostilities."

The U.S., in fact, hopes that the Soviet Union, whose main aim seems to be to rebuild its weak diplomatic position in the Middle East, will act as a restraint on Syria. The Soviets, according to U.S. thinking, would have little to gain from an outbreak of fighting between Syria and Israel. They could again be embarrassed militarily, as they were last year when the Israelis shot down about 100 of Syria's Soviet-made jet fighters.

Syrian President Assad's motives appear far more complex. He probably hoped to frighten the Lebanese into rejecting the Shultz agreement because, in his view, the agreement would leave Israel in a position to threaten Syria militarily. Assad still thinks of Lebanon, which used to be part of Syria, as something of a dependency, and he objects to any diplomatic developments that might threaten its traditional pro-Arab position. Specifically, Assad dislikes the provisions in the Shultz agreement that call for stalks leading to an improvement in relations between Israel and Lebanon once the foreign troops have all gone home. The reason: Since Camp David, Assad has been determined to keep any other Arab country from signing a separate peace treaty with Israel. He opposes any step-by-step approach to solving the region's problems, favoring instead a comprehensive settlement for the Middle East. Without such a settlement, he fears that Syria will lose all hope of retrieving the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981.

According to U.S. diplomats, Assad's current war of nerves is primarily a bargaining ploy. He has not rejected the Israeli-Lebanese withdrawal agreement totally; instead, he appears to be laying down his opening bid in a long, difficult and undoubtedly costly process of negotiation. After his own disappointing stopover in Damascus, Secretary of State Shultz insisted that, despite Syria's lack of enthusiasm, it had not "slammed the door" on an eventual agreement. Shultz was equally optimistic when he reported on his mission to President Reagan. Said the Secretary: "I am confident that in the end [the withdrawal] will happen."

Maybe so, but the diplomatic price will be considerable. Assad opposed President Reagan's peace plan of last September because he saw nothing in it for Syria. In Assad's eyes, the Reagan plan, which called for the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to be linked with Jordan, threatened to split Jordan and the P.L.O. from Syria, much as Egypt had been split from the rest of the Arab world when it made peace with Israel in 1979.

Accordingly, Assad played an instrumental role in blocking Jordanian King Hussein's entry into any U.S.-sponsored negotiations. He told P.L.O. Chairman Arafat that if the P.L.O. tacitly allowed Hussein to join the peace process, Syria would establish a rival P.L.O. in Damascus that would speak for Palestinians in Lebanon and Syria. To preserve his organization, Arafat withdrew from his talks with Hussein. In an effort to placate Arafat, Assad agreed to let the P.L.O. increase its troop strength in Lebanon.

In the meantime, the Soviets moved with inordinate speed to rearm Syria after last year's debacle. The original Soviet motive was simply to re-establish its military relationship with Syria and the radical Arabs. Later, as the withdrawal negotiations foundered, the Soviets spotted an unexpected target of opportunity: a chance to play a pivotal role in an arena from which they have largely been excluded for six years. In effect acknowledging their increasing influence, Shultz last week asked the Soviets to "get on the side of peace" and to urge Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon.

There are other signs that the Soviets are aiming for a comeback in the Middle East. Having failed to win influence with the Iranian government of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Moscow is now strongly backing Iraq, which unlike Iran is Arab, in the 2 1/2-year-old Iran-Iraq war. Egypt, which all but severed diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union in 1981, is on the verge of exchanging ambassadors with Moscow once again. There are even reports that Saudi Arabia's King Fahd has sent a letter to Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov pleading for Soviet help in resolving the Iran-Iraq war. Andropov is said to have made a good impression so far on the moderate Arabs, particularly in contrast with the weak and vacillating Leonid Brezhnev.

Although the U.S. appears to have little chance of bringing about a withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon any time soon, it will press ahead in its dealings with Syria, hoping to find out precisely what Assad's price is. At the same time, the Reagan Administration is trying to persuade moderate Arabs to lend a hand. Shultz stopped over in Saudi Arabia to confer with King Fahd, but the Saudis emerged later with a rather grumpy pronouncement that they would not serve as anyone's "tool." Translation: With their characteristic caution, which often borders on gutlessness, the Saudis are waiting for others to do the work for them. That message came through when President Assad visited Saudi Arabia's King Fahd in Jidda, and was emphasized again when U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger met with the Saudi Defense Minister, Prince Sultan, in Paris.

A big question, as Washington steps up its contacts with Syria, is just what the U.S. can offer Assad as an effective inducement. As long as Israel's artillery is within 14 miles of Damascus, an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon should be the primary incentive. A longer-range Syrian goal is recovery of the Golan Heights. Shultz said last week that he was not "applying" for the job of negotiator between Syria and Lebanon. But once the perimeters of the problem have been established, probably under the guidance of Special Envoy Philip Habib, Shultz may have to embark on another exercise in Middle East shuttle diplomacy. Having pressed the Israelis to leave Lebanon, the U.S. is now obliged to try to persuade the Syrians to uphold their end of the bargain.

--By William E. Smith. Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington and Roberto Suro/Damascus

With reporting by Johanna McGeary, Roberto Suro This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.