Gemayel says he won’t quit

Press, 8 February 1986, Page 10

Gemayel says he won’t quit

NZPA-AP Beirut Christian troops and militiamen loyal to the Lebanese President, Mr Amin Gemayel, clashed yesterday with Muslim forces in Beirut and in mountains to the east after Mr Gemayel said he would not resign, despite Increasing pressure. Militiamen on both sides have moved back into shell-pocked buildings they abandoned several weeks ago when Lebanon’s three most powerful war-lords signed a Syrian-brokered peace accord aimed at ending the country’s 11-year-old civil war.

Mr Gemayel, aged 44, a Maronite Catholic, said at his hill-top palace in Baabda, Bkm east of Beirut, that he was staying. “I will not resign,” he said during a briefing yesterday, the second anniversary of the expulsion

of the Lebanese Army from west Beirut by Muslim militias.

‘‘lt is not a question of personal ambition or anything like that It is my national duty to remain in office . . . until my term expires.” His six-year term will end in September, 1988. This was his first public statement on Lebanon’s growing political crisis since December 28. The campaign to oust him was launched, apparently with Syria’s blessing, after he crushed his main Christian rival, the militia chieftain, Elie Hobeika, in a bloody showdown on January 15. More than 350 people were killed. That action scuttled the Damascus accord that Mr Hobeika had signed with the Druse chieftain, Walid Jumblatt, and the Shi’ite Muslim leader, Nabih Berri.