Political violence in Lebanon was a permanent fixture of international news bulletins during the 1980s. Beginning with the Israeli invasion and bombing of Beirut, the Sabra-Chatila massacres, the ejection of the PLO and the Syrian military entry into the north and east, Lebanon in these years became the site for regional and international conflict played out through its warring communities.

By its very nature discreet, even secretive, diplomacy, whether on the international or domestic stage, was a crucial dimension of the Lebanese war that still awaits full documentation. This insider's memoir, from a man who for most of the 1980s was at the centre of diplomatic efforts to bring the conflict to an end, is therefore particularly welcome.

As foreign minister and then adviser to the Lebanese president, Elie A. Salem witnessed the day-to-day events of the three main phases of the decade - the Reagan administration's frustrated attempt to broker an agreement that would get the Israeli and later the Syrian armies out of Lebanon, the desperate years from 1984 to 1987 when killings and kidnappings isolated the population from the world, and the revival of diplomacy after Syria signalled its readiness for a rapprochement with Washington, finally leading to a settlement that in some ways set the scene for the Arab-Israeli peace accord a few years later.