BEIRUT: United Nations Security Council members called on all Lebanese sides to respect the government’s dissociation policy, while underscoring that Hezbollah’s armament was unacceptable, U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis said this week.
Kubis’ remarks, carried in a statement published Tuesday, came Monday following regular U.N. Security Council consultations on Resolution 1701. The measure ended the 2006 War between Israel and Hezbollah, and consultations on the resolution’s implementation happen every four months.
Kubis said that during the briefing there was insistence that Lebanon “fully respect and follow the tenets of the dissociation policy [from regional conflicts].”
Kubis, according to the statement, also said that during the briefing one of most notable questions “was maintenance of weapons by different armed groups, first of all Hezbollah.”
“And it was mentioned in many of the statements that this is unacceptable,” he added.
Kubis said that during the session, Undersecretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix presented a briefing that focused on the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, UNIFIL. The special coordinator didn’t go into details of what was discussed, but said there was great support for UNIFIL’s work. “I felt that also, members of the Security Council very much appreciate the work of UNIFIL,” Kubis said.
This comes as the Security Council is expected to discuss and renew UNIFIL’s mandate next month.
Last week, Prime Minister Saad Hariri said that Lebanon was looking to increase its naval capabilities and said he would do his best to have a plan endorsed by his government in this regard before the renewal session took place.
During its renewal of UNIFIL’s mandate last year, the Security Council called on Lebanon to develop a plan to increase its naval capabilities, “with the goal of decreasing the [UNIFIL’s] Maritime Taskforce and transitioning activities to the country’s armed forces.”
Kubis said that in Monday’s briefing, he raised the issue of Parliament’s endorsement of the 2019 state budget, and that it was praised, but also said there was a focus on the need for the 2020 budget to be prepared and adopted on time.
He said there were talks on last year’s CEDRE conference, which aimed to garner support for the economy and infrastructure. “There was a discussion ... on the need to implement the CEDRE conference [pledges] because there were member states that definitely noticed not always positive developments as regards the economy of the country,” he said. “So they took very positively these recent signals, the adoption of the budget.”
