Bashir Gemayel, back from Saudi Arabia on 2 July, said the PLO did not mean to leave. Two hours earlier, at the Alexandre Hotel, Sharon had told reporters, Robert Fisk among them, that Israel's only aim was to destroy the PLO and it wanted not 'one square inch' of Lebanon.

Geneva's leaders agreed on Lebanon's 'Arab identity'. Fisk saw two reconciliations: Camille Chamoun ended five years of silence with Suleiman Frangieh, and Frangieh's public embrace of Amin Gemayel seemed to close their families' feud.

Hanf writes that in Washington on 1 December the Americans pressed Gemayel to come to terms with the Druze and Shi'is and ruled out any change to the 17 May agreement.

Hanf counts fifty tanks for Amal, thirty for the army's Sixth Brigade and none for the PSP; Picard mentions T-54 tanks.

Fisk dates it 1 October 1985, de Clerck and Malsagne September. Arkady Katkov was killed. Fisk thinks Sunni fundamentalists wanted Moscow to make Syria halt its Tripoli offensive against Tawheed. The others' release is credited probably to the KGB and Syria by de Clerck and Malsagne, to Syrian mediation by Hanf.

The meetings produced no agreement (Hanf).

Fisk's account puts the kidnapping on 28 May 1985.