Lebanon and Staying Power

The newspapers tell me that America’s role in Lebanon is now on “hold”; and that President Reagan has been defending his peace plan for the Near East, in an interview in the Paris daily Le Monde. In the interview, which appeared in the newspaper dated March 21, the President claimed, with some justification, that his plan, announced in September of 1982, was a good and a realistic one, and if anybody had a better plan, he would like to hear about it.

The trouble seems to be that the U.S. is in no shape to get the interested parties—Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, principally—to sit down and discuss any peace proposals, America’s or anybody else’s. Instead, the King of Jordan, fresh from talks with Mr. Reagan in the White House, launches two bitter attacks on his host within one week; while in Lausanne, Switzerland, leaders of the rival Lebanese factions alternately swap insults and terms of quite spurious endearment. It is enough to make grown observers weep.

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Brian Crozier

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The newspapers tell me that America’s role in Lebanon is now on “hold”; and that President Reagan has been defending his peace plan for the Near East, in an interview in the Paris daily Le Monde. In the interview, which appeared in the newspaper dated March 21, the President claimed, with some justification, that his plan, announced in September of 1982, was a good and a realistic one, and if anybody had a better plan, he would like to hear about it.

The trouble seems to be that the U.S. is in no shape to get the interested parties—Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, principally—to sit down and discuss any peace proposals, America’s or anybody else’s. Instead, the King of Jordan, fresh from talks with Mr. Reagan in the White House, launches two bitter attacks on his host within one week; while in Lausanne, Switzerland, leaders of the rival Lebanese factions alternately swap insults and terms of quite spurious endearment. It is enough to make grown observers weep.