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- <text id=89TT3056>
- <title>
- Nov. 20, 1989: World Notes:Lebanon
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Nov. 20, 1989 Freedom!
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 53
- World Notes
- LEBANON
- Hell to Chief
- </hdr><body>
- <p> The death of Lebanon's body politic, so often declared, may
- yet prove to have been (slightly) exaggerated. Last week,
- meeting in an abandoned air base at Qlaiaat in northern Lebanon,
- 58 aging Deputies of the country's parliament elected Rene
- Moawad, 64, a moderate Maronite Christian lawyer who enjoys the
- backing of Syria, to the presidency. The vote was a crucial step
- toward fulfilling the conditions of the peace plan brokered last
- month by the Arab League.
- </p>
- <p> Moawad is opposed by General Michel Aoun, commander of the
- fanatically loyal Christian army in East Beirut. Aoun is
- enraged that, as part of the peace plan, Moawad is willing to
- diminish Christian political power and let 40,000 Syrian troops
- continue to occupy large parts of Lebanon.
- </p>
- <p> Aoun is too weak to expel the Syrians himself but strong
- enough to create havoc. Last week his backers rioted and even
- roughed up their own religious leader, the pro-Moawad Maronite
- Patriarch.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-