Hashem Osseiran| The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Rival Christian political leaders Samir Geagea and Michel Aoun announced Tuesday a thaw in their decades-old rivalry, issuing a joint statement urging the election of a strong president.
A highly anticipated declaration of intent announced Tuesday outlined 16 general points of agreement between the rival parties on certain key issues such as the need to elect a “strong president” that is representative of Christians and is accepted by Lebanon’s Muslim community.
The election of a president and the drafting of a new electoral law, according to the historic accord, would redirect the wrongful implementation of the National Pact by realizing proper national partnership between Muslims and Christians.
Bitter rivals whose leaders engaged in a bloody conflict in the final year of Lebanon’s 1975-90 Civil War, the Lebanese Forces and Free Patriotic Movement have held a series of dialogue sessions over the past six months which culminated in Tuesday’s meeting and declaration.
The gathering of the two party leaders was seen as a crucial step to ending the country’s year-long presidential impasse, given that both Aoun and Geagea are candidates, but neither has been able to garner enough parliamentary support to win.
“I wished this meeting happened 30 years ago but it’s better late than never,” a gleeful Geagea said after meeting Aoun in the FPM leader’s Rabieh residence.
The LF chief asserted that the meeting with Aoun sought to bridge a gap between “two large political forces that if brought together could achieve positive change in Lebanon.”
“We were not happy with the [recent] stage in our relationship, and we needed to exit this point [in order] to move on to a better stage,” he said. “Some people think that this meeting is the end of our dialogue, but honestly this is only the start.”
Geagea said the past six months of preparatory talks set the groundwork for improving decades of thorny ties between the two groups, noting that today the relationship would “start at zero and the real work will begin from here onward.”
“We are going to exercise our full efforts so this attempt doesn’t fail,” he said. “Issues that we agree on will be good and any differences we have will be put aside for a later stage.”
He said the declaration of intent wasn’t easy to reach but noted that it reflected the positive dynamic that was starting to exist between the two parties.
An unusually buoyant Aoun also spoke briefly after the meeting, saying Geagea’s surprise visit crowned a phase that some people say has taken too long to reach.
He said that dialogue between the rival parties was a gift to Christians who were anxious over the situation in the country.
“The Christians are more relaxed, and you will see more ease in the coming phase,” Aoun said. When asked about whether the fate of the Lebanese presidency was to be determined by regional powers like Saudi Arabia or Iran, Aoun said that “in the end the decision is ours.”
The official document of intent, which was relayed by FPM MP Ibrahim Kanaan and LF media officer Melhem Riachi after the meeting, also involved an agreement on supporting the Lebanese Army and reinforcing legitimate security forces in a manner that would allow for them to exert the state’s full control over all Lebanese territory.
The accord cited the keenness of both parties on securing Lebanon’s border with Syria and their rejection of using Lebanese territory as a corridor for the trafficking of weapons and militants.
The document concludes by noting that the new relationship between the LF and the FPM would be based on a mutual respect of democratic principles, whereby agreement on constitutional and democratic codes would surpass any existing political rivalry.
The statement confirmed both parties’ will to achieve partnership and their insistence on continuing communication in all possible outlets.
