BEIRUT: From now on, Lebanon will be setting making refugee policies while others, including the UNHCR, will work according to them and not the other way around, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said Tuesday.
“We are entering a new phase, where cooperation will be according to Lebanon’s policies, and not according to what others decide,” Bassil said as he left a meeting for the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign and Immigration Affairs. “Lebanon is the side that decides and makes its policies, and the others have to adapt to them.”
Bassil’s bold statement came to answer a question about the tension that has been reported between his ministry and the U.N. refugee agency.