Lebanon, 2008

I should

like to begin by congratulating you, Sir, on your

election as President of the General Assembly at its

sixty-third session.

13 08-51606

I should also like in particular to thank Secretary-

General Ban Ki-moon for the excellent report he has

prepared on the activities of the Organization in the

past year (A/63/1), as well as for his concern in

ensuring that the issues of Lebanon are at the centre of

debate. In its close pursuit of the situation in Lebanon,

the United Nations has established the foundations and

principles necessary to face the crises and challenges

that have undermined the stability and prosperity of

our country. I would like to note in particular the role

of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon

(UNIFIL) and pay tribute to the sacrifices of its

personnel. I note also that in his report the Secretary-

General notes that there is strong cooperation between

UNIFIL and the Lebanese army. I would like to

confirm that Lebanon cares a great deal about the

security and safety of those troops, especially vis-à-vis

the terrorist attacks of which they have been the target.

Lebanon is the cradle of an ancient civilization.

Its peace-loving people set sail from their shores

towards the European continent, carrying with them

elements of an advanced alphabet and spreading in the

Mediterranean realm and whatever horizons they were

able to open the spirit of communication, dialogue, and

free exchange.

Lebanon, which believes in human and cultural

values, is one of the oldest parliamentary democracies

in the Middle East. Its constitution of 1926 embraces

freedom of opinion, freedom of belief and justice and

rejects confessionalism and fanaticism. In its

endeavour to put this democracy into practice, our

nation experienced a distinctive alternation of power

despite all the crises, aggression and wars it has

known. Today, our country is preparing for new

parliamentary elections.

The young Lebanese nation that emerged in 1943,

however, suffered from the aftermath of the catastrophe

that befell Palestine in 1948. It has received on its

narrow territory hundreds of thousands of Palestinian

refugees. Since the late sixties, it has been subject to

two large-scale Israeli invasions and to a series of

Israeli devastating attacks that wreaked havoc in terms

of lives, property and infrastructure. The records kept

by this Organization bear witness to that brutality.

I recall the two massacres of Qana that were

perpetrated against innocent children, women and the

elderly, as well as the aggression of July 2006 in which

tens of thousands were killed and wounded and

displaced which led to the destruction of bridges and

civilian facilities in various parts of the country. The

Israeli bombardment of the Jiyeh power plant and its

fuel storage tanks caused an environmental catastrophe

resulting from an oil slick along the Lebanese

coastline. That prompted the General Assembly of the

United Nations to request Israel to provide immediate

and adequate compensation to Lebanon for the damage

and pollution it caused. Israel must pay due

compensation for the full damage it caused through its

repeated aggression against Lebanon.

The United Nations has not hesitated to shoulder

its responsibilities towards Lebanon. The Organization

issued a series of resolutions in support of Lebanon’s

independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial

integrity, notably Security Council resolutions 425

(1978), which called for an immediate and

unconditional Israeli withdrawal from all Lebanese

territory, and 1701 (2006), which “calls upon the

Government of Israel ... to withdraw all of its forces

from southern Lebanon”. Lebanon reiterates its

commitment to the full content of that resolution.

Mr. Yañez-Barnuevo (Spain), Vice-President, took

the Chair.

However, the intransigence of Israel and its

failure to comply with the will of the United Nations

Security Council pushed Lebanon to adopt, in

conjunction with diplomacy, other legitimate options.

In 2000, thanks to its people, army and resistance,

Lebanon was able to force Israel to withdraw from

most of the Lebanese territory that it occupied. This

year, successful efforts were made, with the help of the

United Nations, to complete the liberation of the

Lebanese prisoners and detainees from Israeli prisons.

Despite these achievements and its continued

commitment to the resolutions of international

legitimacy, Lebanon still faces a host of urgent risks

and challenges that require the following.

First, the international community should compel

Israel to fully implement resolution 1701 (2006) and

stop its serious threats to launch a new war against

Lebanon. Such threats are acts of aggression that

adversely affect the Lebanese State, the national

economy and civil society.

The second challenge is the recovery or liberation

of the remaining occupied Lebanese territory in Shabaa

Farms, the hills of Kfarshuba and the northern part of

08-51606 14

the village of Al-Ghajar, and the upholding of our

rights to our water.

Thirdly, Israel must be forced to stop its

extensive air breaches of Lebanon’s sovereignty. In its

most recent briefing to the Security Council, the

Department of Peacekeeping Operations confirmed the

provocative nature of those actions.

Fourthly, we must obtain all the maps of

landmines and cluster-bomb sites left behind by Israel

on Lebanese soil. Their presence constitutes a direct

threat to the civilian population, especially children. It

deprives farmers and families of their livelihood and

prevents them from cultivating their land. The States

concerned are therefore called upon to meet their

pledges to provide the necessary resources for

demining declustering programmes.

Fifthly, we need to confront terrorism in all its

forms and to maintain internal civic peace. The

Lebanese army and the internal security forces have

been subjected to brutal attacks by terrorist groups in

recent years. They were forced to confront such

terrorist groups and make costly and huge sacrifices to

defend the dignity of the Lebanese people and their

security and stability. In their efforts to combat Israeli

terrorist operations, the Lebanese security services

managed to arrest the head of an Israeli network that

carried out espionage and assassination operations on

Lebanese soil.

The sixth challenge is to develop a

comprehensive national strategy to protect and defend

Lebanon, which would be adopted and coordinated

through genuine national dialogue, which we held on

16 September. That is in accord with the Doha

Agreement, which is based on the sincere will for

national reconciliation and on extending the authority

of the Lebanese State over all of its territory.

On this occasion, Lebanon reiterates its

commitment to the international tribunal established

under Security Council resolution 1757 (2007) to

investigate the crime of the assassination of martyr

Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and his companions.

Lebanon is cooperating with the relevant organs of the

United Nations to bring the truth to light and to achieve

the process of justice away from any politicization.

Lebanon closely follows the developments of the

situation in the Middle East. In view of its commitment

to just Arab causes, especially the cause of Palestine,

Lebanon reiterates its commitment to the process of

achieving a just and comprehensive peace in the region

and to the Arab peace initiative that was unanimously

adopted by Arab leaders at the 2002 Beirut Summit.

Having said that, Lebanon stresses the need for Israel

to withdraw from all Arab territories that are still under

occupation and stresses the inalienable right of the

Palestinian people to return to their land and to

establish their independent State on their national soil.

We call on the international community to assume

its full responsibilities to provide the necessary

financial resources to the United Nations Relief and

Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East

(UNRWA) and to support the work carried out by the

Lebanese State in this area, until a just solution to the

Palestinian problem is found.

From this rostrum, Lebanon cannot but draw the

attention of the international community once again to

its absolute rejection of any form of resettlement of the

Palestinian refugees on its territory, for the following

main reasons.

First, the resettlement of the Palestinian refugees

in Lebanon runs counter to their right to return to their

homeland and homes, which is reaffirmed by the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the

relevant United Nations resolutions.

Secondly, it is difficult for a small country like

Lebanon, with limited resources and a population

below 4 million people, to provide a decent livelihood

for more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees on its

territory at a time when large segments of the Lebanese

people are emigrating in search of their own

livelihoods.

Thirdly, the resettlement of Palestinian refugees

is explicitly rejected in the preamble to the Lebanese

Constitution, and by the Taif Agreement, which has

been recognized and enshrined by resolutions of the

United Nations and constitutes a key element of

consensus in Lebanon.

While the issue of Lebanon is at the centre of

attention of the United Nations, the agenda of our

General Assembly is full of items and of political,

economic, social and environmental topics that are still

waiting for a comprehensive solution. In that context,

Lebanon interacts in a special way with the needs and

aspirations of the African continent, where hundreds of

thousands of Lebanese citizens have been living on its

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generous soil for over a century, contributing to

Africa’s prosperity and development under difficult

circumstances. Accordingly, we support the political

declaration issued yesterday at the high-level meeting

on Africa’s development needs. We therefore believe

that a major international effort should be undertaken

to finance programmes to combat poverty, disease and

illiteracy as a means to preserve human dignity and to

prevent further armed conflicts on that continent.

Similarly, we hope that a more effective project

to build solidarity in the face of natural disasters will

be quickly and efficiently finalized in view of the

increasing risks arising from climate change, global

warming, environmental degradation and the spread of

wildfires in forests and green spaces.

Deeply rooted in history and, with the rise of

nationalist movements, a contributor to the shaping of

the Arab renaissance at the political, cultural,

intellectual and social levels, as well as a founding

member of the League of Arab States, Lebanon is

devoted to preserving Arab solidarity. In that context,

we need to revisit the concept of cooperation and good-

neighbourliness between countries to consolidate peace

and solidarity in the world. That approach will

contribute to preserving human rights, and humanity

will thus be able to prevent other world wars, regional

conflicts and the transnational phenomenon of

terrorism, as well as upheavals in our globalized

economies, global crises and food crises. All of those

matters represent major threats that could spark new

wars that might spill over onto the regional level and

from one continent to the next.

We need to push for United Nations reform in

order to meet that new international challenge.

Lebanon is extremely pleased to announce that we

have been nominated once again to a non-permanent

seat on the Security Council for the biennium 2010-

2011. We are of course committed to making a positive

and constructive contribution to the Council and hope

that we will have the support of all friendly and

brotherly States.

Lebanon’s philosophy has been based on dialogue

and coexistence from the day its citizens approved the

National Covenant in 1943, and subsequently when

they approved the 1989 National Reconciliation

Agreement in Taif. Those themes were also repeatedly

stressed in the 2008 Doha agreement. In the face of

worsening international conflicts that herald a potential

clash of civilizations, Lebanon might well represent a

needed international example as a living laboratory of

dialogue of cultures and religions.

In his Apostolic Letter of 1989, His Holiness the

late Pope John Paul II described Lebanon as “more

than a country; it is a message of freedom and a model

of pluralism for both the East and the West”. Moreover,

in his homily delivered during his apostolic journey to

Lebanon in 1997, John Paul II characterized Lebanon

as “a country of many religious faiths, [which] has

shown that these different faiths can live together in

peace, brotherhood and cooperation”. With 18 different

sects coexisting on its soil, and having successfully

preserved its democratic system and fundamental

freedoms in spite of all sorts of challenges, Lebanon

aspires today to become an international centre for the

management of dialogue of civilizations and cultures,

hoping that the forces of good in the world will prevail

and that we can be constructive in our efforts to reach a

just and comprehensive solution to all aspects of the

conflict in the Middle East as soon as possible.