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Until recently, the U.S. has played a limited role in the Lebanese crisis. America's diplomatic clout has of necessity been limited. Because of the U.S. relationship with Israel, there was no prospect of discussing truce plans with the Palestinians, who are not only key participants in the struggle but also a central issue as far as the Lebanese Christians are concerned; they resented the fact that the 320,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon had so much power. Beyond that, Washington has not had its top representative in Beirut since January: Ambassador G. McMurtrie Godley is on sick leave recovering from a throat cancer operation. But last week the State Department summoned L. Dean Brown, 55, a highly regarded Arabist, out of retirement to troubleshoot in the beleaguered city.
Brown, who retired last year from the Foreign Service to become director of Washington's privately run Middle East Institute, was ambassador to Amman in 1970 when Palestinian fedayeen went to war with the army of King Hussein. As the newly arrived envoy in Amman, he strapped a pearl-handled pistol to his waist, rode to the palace in an armored personnel carrier and presented his credentials to the King. Brown flew into Beirut last week unarmed and with instructions from Secretary of State Kissinger to make contact with Jumblatt and Franjieh and offer the good offices of the U.S. as mediator. State Department spokesmen carefully explained that Brown was not authorized to deal with Arafat or any other Palestinian leader. Nonetheless, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that informal contacts might be made.
Although Brown conferred with a wide range of Christian and Moslem leaders (including President Franjieh), the man principally responsible for arranging the freeze was Syrian President Hafez Assad. He was greatly embarrassed by the collapse of the January 23 cease-fire arranged by his Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam. Assad's government launched a diplomatic offensive to get Jumblatt's forces to stop fighting.
Calling attention to their own forces based along the border, the Syrians hinted at intervention. They also cut off Jumblatt's supply line: at one point he complained that the Syrians were denying him 4,000 guns and 7 million rounds of ammunition that had been donated by the Egyptian government and confiscated when they reached Damascus en route to Beirut. Finally, Assad persuaded Arafat to put pressure on Jumblatt to accept another ceasefire. The persuasions contained an implicit warning that if the war continued the Lebanese-based Palestinians might lose Syrian support and supplies.
The diplomatic moves and countermoves produced some strange alliances —some new, some old. For the past two years Arafat has been at ideological odds with Dr. George Habash, the militantly Marxist head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. But both Habash and Arafat are supporters of Jumblatt, and both felt threatened by Syria's strategy.