The Reagan Administration’s top Middle East aide, Richard Murphy, promised Israeli officials here today to try to get the Israeli-Lebanese talks at Nakura moving toward progress before they recess for the Christmas-New Year period.
Murphy, who is Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, returned to the region last week and flew here yesterday from Saudi Arabia for separate meetings with Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Ministry officials. He will meet later with Premier Shimon Peres who has just returned from Paris.
The Israeli and Lebanese military delegations met in Nakura last Thursday to continue their deliberations over an Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon and security for Israel’s northern borders.
It was their eighth round of talks in the Lebanese border village under the auspices of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). They will meet again tomorow for their ninth negotiating session.
MIGHT UNDERTAKE A ‘SHUTTLE’
Foreign Ministry sources said that Murphy promised his best efforts to get the apparently deadlocked talks moving. Murphy himself said after his session at the Defense Ministry that he was here “looking at what possiblities there are for movement ahead on the Lebanese situation.” He is scheduled to fly to Beirut and Damascus and then, according to sources here, might undertake a “shuttle” between those capitals and Jerusalem.
Little information emerged from Thursday’s meeting at Nakura. All parties apparently agreed to leak nothing to the press. It was known however that the Lebanese delegates outlined their ideas for the redeployment of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL north of the Israeli border after the Israel Defense Force leaves.
Gen. Amos Gilboa, head of the Israeli delegation, said after the meeting, “We are sitting, studying the plan and meanwhile there are additional things we must clarify.” He added: “There are fundamental, very difficult problems with this issue of the Lebanese army … where it will be deployed. Therefore we shall wait and see. We shall be wiser in a while.”
Israel Radio reported Thursday that the helicopters ferrying the Lebanese delegation from Beirut to Nakura came under missile fire on two occasions last week from the vicinity of Beirut airport, just south of the capital. The Lebanese fly to the meetings because the coastal highway, controlled by various warning militias, is not safe.
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