Beirut Fights to Keep Its Airport Open

BEIRUT — Lebanon stepped up its campaign against President Reagan’s plan to isolate Beirut airport Friday, seeking diplomatic support from 21 nations and hinting of an Arab boycott of all U.S. ships and planes.

In Christian East Beirut, U.S. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew gave President Amin Gemayel a letter from Reagan that official sources said outlined the reasons behind the U.S. effort to close Beirut International Airport.

“Reliable sources described the meeting as cool,” said state-run television, adding that Gemayel told Bartholomew that the Reagan Administration was acting arbitrarily and unfairly and in violation of international law.

Informed sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified, said Gemayel stressed his opposition to terrorism and hijacking and added that Lebanon will “confront the American moves aimed at encouraging more countries to ban Beirut airport and its (Lebanon’s) airliners.”

Never Intervened

Throughout the 16-day TWA hijacking and hostage crisis last month, the Maronite Christian president did not intervene to free 39 American passengers held by Shia Muslims, nor did he publicly condemn the seizure of the plane.

Britain so far has been the only major U.S. ally in Europe to back Reagan’s boycott campaign, launched Monday as a step against terrorism.

Some Europeans echoed U.S. demands that Gemayel must take tough measures to regain control of the complex and arrest Shia Muslim gunmen who seized the TWA jet.

Fuad Turk, undersecretary at the Foreign Ministry, called European ambassadors to a 40-minute meeting Friday seeking assurances their countries would not join what Lebanon views as punitive U.S. reprisal against it, not just the hijackers.

Envoys from Britain, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Turkey, Finland, France, Sweden and Switzerland attended.

Must Condemn Hijacking

Italian Ambassador Antonio Mancini reported later, “We have demanded the Lebanese government emphatically condemn the TWA hijacking.”

France already has said Lebanon should arrest the hijackers and put them on trial for killing a U.S. Navy frogman, Robert Dean Stethem, during the hijacking.

The airport has been used in seven hijackings this year. In the last incident, Shia gunmen commandeered a TWA airliner June 14 and forced it to Beirut, where they shot one American hostage and held 39 others for 16 days.

Washington suspended U.S. landing rights for planes operated by Lebanon’s government-owned Middle East Airlines and its cargo operation, Trans-Mediterranean Airways, shortly after the American hostages were freed last Sunday.

Former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, a Maronite Christian like Gemayel, called U.S. reprisals “a clear attack on the Lebanese people who have always stood against kidnapings and terrorism.”

Tightening Security

The Gemayel government announced earlier Friday that it is tightening security at the airport. Earthen barricades blocked roads into the airport complex from Shia slums around the facility, and officials said work had begun on building a fence around the perimeter. Security personnel checked baggage and passengers, a rare sight in the past.

Troops were in evidence at the airport Friday, but they belonged to the overwhelmingly Shia 6th Brigade, a virtually autonomous unit that is allied to the Shia Amal militia. Amal has controlled the airport for months and took an active role in the hijacking.

Brig. Yassin Sweid, former head of airport security, who resigned months ago to protest the militia takeover of the area around the airport, was quoted as saying he has little confidence in government efforts to improve security.

“Even if Beirut airport is turned into a Switzerland--and I don’t expect that to happen . . . the situation at the airport will remain as it is until legitimate government forces take real control,” he was quoted as saying in Beirut’s independent English-language Daily Star.

Fighting Flares Again

The moves came as Palestinian and Shia Muslim forces clashed briefly at the Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra in southern West Beirut, and Muslim gunmen fought with automatic weapons in the center of the capital.

Christian Voice of Lebanon radio said one man was killed and six wounded in the center-city shooting between members of the Druze Progressive Socialist Party and the Shia Amal movement.

Amal and the Druze agreed Thursday on new measures to strengthen security at Beirut airport. On Friday, police searched civilians and cars and a bulldozer pushed an earthen barricade into place to block one of many unguarded roads leading to runways.

But a man in fatigues rode a bicycle across a runway minutes before a flight landed while a few militia officials, one of them armed, stood inside the customs area.

“Nothing has really changed,” said an air traffic controller.