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.