Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called today for a “coordination” between U.S. and Israeli forces and others in order to change the “balance of power” in Lebanon.
“It is an amazing phenomenon that the Israeli army is sitting 20 kilometers from where Americans are being killed and there seems to be no coordination between our policies at all,” Kissinger said on the ABC-TV “This Week With David Brinkley” program. The U.S. has to define its policy in Lebanon, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. It is not clear what the U.S. wants to do in Lebanon, he said.
Referring to the terrorist attack on U.S. marine headquarters in Beirut this morning, Kissinger said “the outrage today” was a “symptom” of the present situation in Lebanon in which U.S. forces were “passive” while there was a daily “gradual disintegration “of the Lebanese government.
“The problem in Lebanon is whether the radical forces, supported or encouraged by the Syrians and the Soviets, will gradually gain such a degree of dominance that the moderate government in Lebanon will atrophy and that Lebanon will become a Syrian province,” Kissinger said. He maintained that the U.S. cannot bring about peace by just “sitting there. “It has to, through “coordination” with other governments, change the balance of power so that the radical forces do not gain control, Kissinger said. He said that once this is accomplished, the U.S. could be generous in negotiating the withdrawal of all forces from Lebanon.
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