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135 of 220 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times

May 18, 1983, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition

ISRAEL AND SIGN AGREEMENT AT 2 CEREMONIES

BYLINE: By DAVID K. SHIPLER, Special to the New York Times

SECTION: Section A; Page 16, Column 1; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 1687 words

DATELINE: JERUSALEM, May 17

Israel and Lebanon signed a security agreement today that is intended to lead to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon and continuing Israeli involvement in policing the country's southern region.

The agreement came nearly a year after Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982, with the stated goals of helping to install a Government more acceptable to the Israelis, diminishing Syrian influence in Lebanon and ousting guerrillas of the Palestine Liberation Organization from their military bases and political headquarters.

In the hope of consolidating these gains, Israel has made its troop withdrawal and the carrying out of the rest of the agreement contingent upon the withdrawal of P.L.O. and Syrian forces from the north and east of Lebanon. The return of all Israelis held as prisoners of war and an accounting of Israelis missing in action are also prerequisites for an Israeli pullout.

The agreement will be technically completed upon the exchange of instruments of ratification, a formality said to involve another approval by Israel's Cabinet and Lebanon's Parliament. Officials expect this to take place within a week.

But no aspect of the accord is to go into effect until the Israeli withdrawal.

Successful but Fragile

The agreement, which the United States endorsed as a witness, was a step less than a full peace treaty. But it was the second Israeli success in recent years in concluding a formal agreement on peaceful relations with an Arab neighbor, lending it a symbolic weight much like the Israeli-Egyptian Camp David accords of 1978.

The signing, at consecutive ceremonies in Lebanon and Israel, took place in a spirit of fragile accord, however, with no certainty that the volatile situation of Lebanon would let the pact be fulfilled. The choice of the sites for the ceremonies and the cautious remarks of the heads of the delegations testified to the potential for ultimate failure.

Syria has vehemently denounced the accord and has pledged to block it, although Western and Middle Eastern diplomats see some chance of a Syrian pullout if Damascus obtains a defense treaty with Lebanon, security arrangements at least as extensive as Israel's and generous financial grants from Saudi Arabia.

In the agreement and its supplements, Israel and Lebanon pledge ''to live in peace with each other,'' ''declare the termination of the state of war between them,'' define the border as inviolable, require each country to prevent the use of its territory by armed bands for attacks on the other and bar hostile propaganda against each other. Page 2 ISRAEL AND LEBANON SIGN AGREEMENT AT 2 CEREMONIES The New York Times May 18, 1983, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition

The 2 Ceremonies

The first signing ceremony today was at Khalde, a seaside town just south of Beirut where Syrian and Israeli forces fought a tank battle during the Israeli drive to Beirut last summer. Then the delegations flew by helicopter to Qiryat Shemona, the Israeli border town that had lived for years under sporadic rocket and artillery attacks from P.L.O. bases in southern Lebanon.

The agreement was signed in four languages - English, French, Hebrew and Arabic - by the men who had represented their countries in the five months of negotiations: Antoine Fattal, a retired Lebanese diplomat who was once Acting Director of the Foreign Ministry, and David Kimche, Director General of Israel's Foreign Ministry. Morris Draper, an American special envoy who participated in all the negotiations, signed as a witness.

The United States is reportedly committed to giving Israel a memorandum, which will be kept secret at Lebanese insistence, pledging American efforts to have the agreement carried out and expressing American understanding of Israel's intention to remain in Lebanon pending a Syrian pullout.

In brief remarks, all three representatives took note of the uncertain future and portrayed the agreement as but a first step. Mr. Draper praised the meshing of Lebanese and Israeli objectives, saying, ''They are crossing the threshold of a more satisfactory and sensible relationship.'' He acknowledged ''the obstacles ahead'' and pledged American help in overcoming them.

Sacrifices on Both Sides

''Both countries have been victimized,'' Mr. Draper declared. ''Their peoples over the years have made enormous sacrifices, and not only in blood and property. There is no one here among either the Lebanese or the Israeli delegations who has not somehow been touched by past tragedies.''

Mr. Fattal also said Israel and Lebanon had an obligation to tackle the obstacles still on the horizon. Lebanon was not abandoning the Arab world, he asserted, but was taking ''a step toward a just and lasting peace,'' a phrase, he noted, that appeared in the May 1974 disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel.

Mr. Kimche made an explicit call on Syria to withdraw. ''I know that the signatures that we have affixed on the agreement are just the beginning of a new chapter in our histories,'' he said, ''that many obstacles still stand in our paths and that there are many who would wish to render the agreement we are signing meaningless.

''I would like to say to all of those who castigate the agreements and who see peace as a betrayal of their cause, I would like to say to them that you cannot go against the will of the people. And the people of Lebanon, who have proven their strength of determination by maintaining their independent character from the time of the Phoenicians, these people of Lebanon are in favor of this agreement just as our own people are.''

Terms of Accord

The accord establishes a security region in southern Lebanon running 20 to 37 miles north of Israel's northern border. It is to be patrolled by a maximum of eight Lebanese-Israeli teams and two Lebanese Army brigades maintaining direct communications with Israeli Army officers. Two headquarters are to be staffed by Lebanese commanders and Israeli liaison officers. Lebanese military deployment in the south is to be restricted in numbers of troops and types of weapons.

A Joint Liaison Committee, including the United States as a participant, is to oversee carrying the agreement out. In that body, a Security Arrangements Committee is to deal with military matters. Page 3 ISRAEL AND LEBANON SIGN AGREEMENT AT 2 CEREMONIES The New York Times May 18, 1983, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition

Although the agreement does not establish diplomatic relations, it says each country may, if it wishes, set up a liaison office in the other, a device Israel sees as creating the embryo of an embassy.

If the agreement leads to an Israeli troop withdrawal, negotiations are to begin within six months after the pullout on normalizing the movement of goods and people across the Israeli-Lebanese frontier. The agreement says nothing about the interim, but Israeli officials are confident the border can remain relatively open, as it is now, at least to commerce.

Sharon's Role in Accord

Much of the groundwork on the agreement was done last fall by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, the chief architect of the war, who met secretly with a still unidentified confidant of President Amin Gemayel of Lebanon and drew up a document outlining an accord. Mr. Sharon then publicized the document, damaging Israeli-Lebanese trust and, in the opinion of Israeli and American officials, setting back the negotiations.

The final agreement represents some compromise of Mr. Sharon's demands, and he has denounced it as inadequate. Still, it contains many elements of the original Israeli proposal.

The former Defense Minister demanded limits on Lebanese weapons in the south; the restrictions, scaled down slightly, are in the accord. Mr. Sharon wanted five outposts in southern Lebanon manned by a total of 750 Israeli soldiers and intelligence agents who would have the right to enter houses and detain civilians in search of P.L.O. guerrillas. The idea was rejected by Lebanon and finally abandoned by Israel, but joint patrols under Lebanese command were approved.

Issue of Major Haddad

In addition, Israel wanted its longtime client and ally, Maj. Saad Haddad, as the commander of a southern Lebanese Army brigade that would patrol a security zone north of the Israeli border. Major Haddad, who left the Lebanese Army during the 1975-76 civil war to set up his own militia with Israeli arms and training, is not mentioned in the agreement; Lebanon has reportedly offered to make him a deputy commander.

Major Haddad, it was believed, would open the door to extensive, clandestine Israeli involvement in the region, as he did along a narrow border zone he controlled for years. Through the major, Israel itself could effectively command the southern brigade, creating favorable conditions for the operations of its intelligence agents and elite antiterrorist units.

In practice, the agreement need not preclude such extensive, clandestine Israeli involvement. Indeed, the accord appears to be less a ceiling on the Israeli role than a foundation for its day-today evolution into a close Israeli-Lebanese military and intelligence partnership. Presumably, Lebanon will send to the south a brigade commander who shares Israel's desire to keep the P.L.O. out and who will therefore welcome quiet Israeli help in doing so.

The Lebanese have made it clear throughout the negotiations that they would be more comfortable with unwritten understandings along such lines. Lebanese negotiators told their Israeli counterparts repeatedly that there was no need to put everything down on paper, that an oral agreement was enough - and more desirable in terms of Lebanon's ties to the Arab world.

To help this development of a close, discreet relationship, Israel has selected an old hand at the game to coordinate its relations with Lebanon. He is Uri Lubrani, who has served as the senior Israeli representative in some difficult places, including , and .

Mr. Lubrani is reputed to be an official of Mossad, Israel's civilian intelligence agency, who developed a close friendship with the Shah of Iran that enabled extensive Israeli construction contracts, arms trade and other commerce with Iran when Teheran maintained the fiction that there were no relations at all. Israel is counting on him to use his Page 4 ISRAEL AND LEBANON SIGN AGREEMENT AT 2 CEREMONIES The New York Times May 18, 1983, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition skills in Lebanon.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Illustrations: Map of Middle East

Copyright 1983 The New York Times Company