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At first, the university provided Kerr with a bodyguard. But, arguing that such protection was not appropriate, Kerr dispensed with it. One morning last week the two gunmen entered the administration building unchallenged, made their way to the third floor and waited. At 9: 10 a.m., as Kerr stepped out of the elevator and be gan to walk toward his office, one of the terrorists shot him twice in the head with a gun fitted with a silencer. The gunmen escaped, and at a nearby hospital, Kerr was pronounced dead.
News of the assassination spread quickly. Lebanon's President, Amin Gemayel, expressed his condolences to U.S. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew. Former Prime Minister Saeb Salam, a leader in the effort to unite the country's warring factions, called the murder "a flagrant disregard for values and an illustration of how seriously security has deteriorated." Particularly vulnerable at the moment are individual Americans and Frenchmen, partly because the terrorists are finding it increasingly difficult to penetrate the military bases and thus are turning their guns on relatively unprotected civilian targets. Two weeks ago gunmen on a motorbike shot and slightly wounded the wife of a French diplomat in broad daylight. As usual, the terrorists escaped.
In at least one important respect, the motives of the pro-Iranian terrorists coincide precisely with those of Syrian President Assad: both want to press the Multi-National Force to leave Lebanon. When Donald Rumsfeld, President Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, met with Assad in Damascus two weeks ago, the Syrian leader repeated his demands that the U.S. Marines as well as other MNF troops leave Beirut, Israeli forces withdraw from southern Lebanon, and the Lebanese-Israeli agreement of last May 17 be set aside. U.S. diplomats believe Assad is deliberately stalling, in the hope that the pressure on Reagan to remove the Marines from Lebanon will intensify as the U.S. election campaign heats up.
Earlier this month the various Lebanese factions seemed ready to accept a formal ceasefire. This would have permitted the Lebanese government, whose present power does not even extend beyond the Beirut city limits, to expand its control to a wider area. Such a development could eventually lead to a withdrawal of the Marines and the other peacekeeping forces. At the last moment, however, Druze Leader Walid Jumblatt, who receives strong support from Syria, raised new objections and effectively scuttled the tentative agreement.
Syria was generally blamed for the failure. The Saudis, who were also involved in the negotiations, would welcome an easing of tensions in Lebanon, but are at present preoccupied with problems of their own. Last week they signed a $4.1 billion contract with the French to buy an air-defense system that will include mobile, low-altitude Shahine and Crotale surface-to-air missiles. The Saudis, who have usually purchased American weapons in the past but are diversifying their arms purchases, are fearful that the Iran-Iraq war might spill over and begin to affect them directly.