Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 3

Tuesday, May 20, 1986 Santa Cruz Sentinel A-3 Chamber plans to make a bid for city's tourist-promotion job Peace will come when the whiskey is gone AKRAM KHATER, 24, Lebanese, Junfighter, Arab, Christian, Levi-clad UCSC stucfcnt majoring in history. I He came out of the hell of Beirut, disgisted with people killing one another over whose god right. The slim, swarthy ex-street fighter, who knew the Wally Trabing American Peter Kilburn chamber member Joe Ghio abstained, along with five other chamber members. The bureau has been operating with contributions from motel-room tax revenues collected by the city and county. The city has been the bureau's largest contributor, giving 25-percent of its share of room-tax revenues to the bureau an amount totalling more than $350,000 last year and 60-percent of the total bureau budget.

Recently, council members said they wanted to test the waters to see if another agency such as the chamber could do a better job than the bureau. week or so as soon as details are ironed out. If council members award the contract to the chamber, Stoloff said the chamber also will compete against the bureau for the county's tourism-promotion contract. Stoloff declined to comment on the amount of the bid that will be made to the city. The four dissenting chamber votes were cast by City Councilwoman Katy Sears-Williams, a longtime backer of the bureau; bureau president Mary Albright; Downtown Association member and former president Larry Pearson; and Ann Mitchell, a member of the bureau's accounting firm.

Councilman and SANTA CRUZ Chamber of Commerce board members Monday decided to give the Convention and Visitors Bureau a run for the money in the competition for the city contract to promote tourism. Chamber board members voted 15-4 to submit a contract proposal to the City Council to win the job now being done by the bureau. If council members side with the chamber, the decision will end the bureau's seven-year tenure as the chief tourism-promotion agency for the city. Chamber Executive Director Lionel Stoloff said today the chamber would submit a proposal to the city manager within the next before he was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists, sat (town with me to give his version of man's inhumanity to man in his homeland. Who's winning? After 10 years of killing and destroying Beirut, he said, "There are no winners.

It's a stalemate." Khater played out his role in this theater of death. He was carrying a machine gun in the streets at 15, yas kidnapped, shot ind re-' Akram Khater leased. $AY Hi-Rat PnQhnolc with Mil wmmwiwi wimo acJiw Today's High Rate' Bonus Introductory Rate 6.112.00aTT ($10,000" deposited from another institutionf required to earn bonus rate) Open a Hi-Rate Passbook high rate and bonus interest! "There is constant renewal. In the city you can see five layers of rebuilding. Lebanese have this tenacity that allows the citizens to survive the war psychologically.

"This tenacity also shows in the gardens. There are little gardens in every nook and corner. I've seen guys watering their tomatoes with bullets whizzing all around." "I was a soldier at 15, but you see 13- and 14-year-olds out there with machine guns. "It's peer pressure. After school is out, you see all your friends with guns so you go along.

"It was like pot smoking. Your friends do it, so you do it. "Also, it's a real power trip carrying a machine gun. I lost five of my close friends to the fighting," he said. I said it sounds like something kids go through there like acne and puberty.

"That's a good way to put it," said Khater. "There is more excitement involved than political fervor. "This was very revealing to me. When I came to the U.S., my attitude changed in two weeks. I saw that much of the fault of the war lay with the Christians.

There were kids in my neighborhood who had never seen a Muslim. They imagined them as monsters. Religion has become an easy way to classify others and develop hates," he said. "Also, I was disgusted with the whole mess. If you stay in Beirut, you go crazy, fight, or leave.

The elite have already left. Early on in the war the fighters included doctors and lawyers but they have dropped out. "At one point in the fighting, I was kidnapped. My father, who is a colonel in the Lebanese internal forces (police), used his influence and I was released. But before they let me go, one of them shot me in the foot, just to leave me with a souvenir." Although the Palestinian refugees have attempted to stay out of the civil war, they have been an influence.

They are very poor and have not integrated into the Lebanese society. They have been occupied with protecting themselves. He said the Shiites have lived near the refugee camps in southern Lebanon and when the Israelis attacked the PLO camps they also bombed the Shiites, some say on purpose, to get them mad at the PLO. This has been successful to a certain extent. Khater was introduced to Peter Kilburn, librarian at the American University of Beriut, by his brother who was a professor there.

"The tragedy of it was that Kilburn sympathized with the Lebanese. His death was an absurdity. "Some day, I will be returning to the Middle East area and perhaps become involved in politics," he said. He has his job cut out for him. "It will be like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again." Hi-Rate Passbook's a real best seller! and get it all! iK Baby Gen9his! Ki Lj Don't read Crudely put, he said, the war is about Christians fighting the Muslims.

When it started 10 years ago, the conflict involved the left and the right. "There was actually a mixture of Christians and Muslims on both sides," he said. "As the ivar deteriorated, the hatred grew between religions and this became the conflict. The Phalangists are th Christians. They are the more affluent.

The Muslins are represented by Shiites and Sunni. But evei these Muslim factions are split and don't get along." When will it end? "My uncle called me from Beirut yesterday VThurs-day) and I asked him that question. He said: 'When they run out of "It's kids with guns running the show now," (hater said. "The government forces are ineffective cuitroll-' ing the civil war. The people have more guns tlan the Lebanese army.

Outside forces interfering with Lebanon's internal war have increased the misery, said Khater. Syria and Israel tried to be brokers. Added to this are the some 350,000 Palestinian refugees who have been carryjg on their war with Israel. "The U.S. is out of the picture now.

The opin.cn in Lebanon is that the U.S. had a chance to take the high moral road in 1982, but instead ended up joining the fighting. Although Americans per se are not disliked, there is a general disillusionment with the U.S. government. "I talked with some U.S.

Marines. They did not know why in the hell they were there, except that some iad the idea they were a peacekeeping force and were supposed to be friendly to everybody. Instead, a to; of them ended up fighting and dead." I wondered how much of Beirut is damaged? 1 "All Beirut has ben touched by the war becauM of the missiles. I lived in the Christian section and my room took three hits. When this happened we rebult.

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