Premier Shimon Peres repeated today that the Israel Defense Force would be out of “almost all of Lebanon” within two months. But Foreign Minister and Deputy Premier Yitzhak Shamir, just back from a 10-day visit to Belgium and Canada, said he Knew nothing about any Cabinet decision to speed-up the withdrawal from Lebanon.
Peres told the CBS-TV “Face the Nation” interview program Sunday that the second stage of the IDF’s withdrawal would be completed within 8-10 weeks. Today, he gave an audience of high school students in Ramle the same timetable.
Asked why the withdrawal was not being speeded-up, Peres said: “I know there is much talk about speeding up a debate on the withdrawal but a debate will not speed up the withdrawal … I have already said that the IDF will be out of Lebanon within two months — from eight to 10 weeks … The speed of the withdrawal is due to purely operational considerations, not for any political reasons.”
There has, in fact, been no Cabinet decision on the matter. Communications Minister Amnon Rubinstein of the Shinui faction said after Sunday’s Cabinet meeting that he had formally submitted a proposal to combine the second the third stages of the withdrawal and he expected the Cabinet to debate it in two weeks, unless the ministers evolve a position on it sooner.
Shamir said he knew of no decision by the Cabinet or the Ministerial Defense Committee but that he would “look into it and make up my mind.”
IDF TELESCOPING WITHDRAWAL STAGES
The IDF appears nevertheless to be telescoping the second and third stages of its withdrawal operation. According to some observers, by May or June there will be no IDF forces beyond the international border except for small groups of advisors and liaison officers with the Israel-backed South Lebanon Army (SLA).
Evidence that the withdrawal has been speeded up is the round-the-clock removal of IDF equipment from south Lebanon now underway. Army engineers are dismantling the expensive, sophisticated electronic and other systems along with conventional structures from mountain top listening and observation posts.
The operation is continuous, assisted during the night by powerful floodlights. The frigid cold and heavy snows that blanket the mountains have not turned out to be the obstacles they were expected to be.
Military sources confirmed this in the case of Mt. Barukh, the highest and most northerly IDF outpost in south Lebanon where, deep snow notwithstanding, equipment is being loaded on to heavy transport vehicles and removed down the winding, slippery roads.
The IDF, meanwhile, is continuing its almost daily searches of Shiite villages in the western sector of south Lebanon for weapons and suspected terrorists.
Many of these villages, east of Tyre, are believed to be bases for attacks on IDF and SLA units. Two Shiites were killed and a house was blown up in Maaroub village yesterday during a nine-hour IDF search. An army spokesman said the two villagers were shot while trying to evade the search. A spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said two bullet-riddled bodies were found near Maaroub and that the bodies of two other men, aged 21 and 70, were found on the outskirts of Dir Kanoun village. It was not Known how they died.
IDF searches continued in Jibshit village where two Israeli soldiers were killed and five wounded in an ambush Sunday. UNIFIL spokesman Timor Goksell said IDF soldiers told French UNIFIL troops in Maaroub that they were looking for the local school director who they claimed is a known terrorist. They did not find him but they destroyed his father’s house in the village, Goksell said.
Shamir, commenting on other matters, said he has heard nothing of proposals for a meeting in Washington between U.S. officials and a joint Jordanian-Palestine Liberation Organization delegation. He said he hoped such reports were untrue. “We are against any meetings between the U.S. and the PLO,” he declared.
Asked about the meeting between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Hussein of Jordan which began in Amman and shifted to Baghdad yesterday when the two Arab leaders flew there for talks with Iraqi officials, Shamir insisted that no meetings between Arab leaders will foster peace in the Middle East. “Only direct talks between Israel and Arab leaders can help bring about peace,” he said.
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