BEIRUT: Ministers must overcome their differences for the government to work for the interests of the Lebanese people, Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai said during his Sunday sermon.
“May the government tighten the ties of cooperation between its members and rise above differences and accusations,” he said, according to the state-run National News Agency.
The patriarch’s comments follow Cabinet’s first postconfidence session Thursday, when a debate on restoring ties with the Syrian government caused President Michel Aoun to abruptly end it, saying that he alone would decide the country’s higher interests.
Rai threw his weight behind Aoun’s stance during a meeting between the two Friday. “The president is the protector of the Constitution and the people, and his position in Cabinet yesterday was honorable,” Rai said at the time.
The Maronite leader echoed the sentiment during Sunday’s sermon, expressing hope that “the government ... will act in the spirit of the Constitution.”
At Thursday's Cabinet session, ministers from the Lebanese Forces criticized what they claimed were breaches of Lebanon’s policy of dissociation, represented by a recent visit to Damascus by the refugee affairs minister to discuss refugee returns as well as recent comments by Defense Minister Elias Bou Saab, who asserted that Lebanese ministers are free to visit Syria at will. Bou Saab, who belongs to Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, had also emphasized the need for direct communication between Beirut and Damascus over Syrian refugee returns.
Aoun, whose allies support normalized ties and coordination with Syria to ensure a safe return of refugees to their country, said that the dissociation policy concerned the conflict in Syria and not the 1.5 million refugees living in Lebanon, a Baabda Palace source told The Daily Star at the time.