Troubled Land

In a gruffly conciliatory broadcast, Lebanon's Premier Sami Solh informed his countrymen last week that President Camille Charroun would not seek to change the constitution so that he might be re-elected in September. Since this was what opposition rebel leaders had been agitating about ever since the insurrection broke out weeks ago, a few rebel cheers might have been expected.

But there were no cheers. "Too late," cried ex-Premier Saeb Salam from his barricaded mansion in Beirut's Moslem quarter. Two days later street fighting broke out again; an estimated five persons were killed in Beirut and Tripoli. Next day His Beatitude Paul Meouchi, onetime Los Angeles parish priest who is now patriarch of the Maronite Roman Catholic sect to which Chamoun and most Lebanese Christians belong, said in a press conference that the President should "take a trip" abroad and turn over power to Army Chief Brigadier General Fuad Shehab. Otherwise, he warned, the half-Christian, half-Moslem republic of Lebanon might see its civil war turn into a disastrous religious conflict.

In dogged hope that "there should be no further intervention in our affairs from abroad," Lebanese Foreign Minister Charles Malik hurried to New York to press charges before the U. N. this week of "massive" aid to the rebels by Nasser's United Arab Republic.

Back home, Lebanon's sharp-trading Christian and Moslem businessmen ruefully reckoned their losses. An estimated $50 million in foreign funds have fled, and bankers moaned that even if a compromise could halt the bloodletting, Lebanon would be a long time regaining its reputation as a safe, stable island in the turbulent Middle East.

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