Lebanon’s Aoun asks for support to repatriate refugees

By Wassim Seifeddine

BEIRUT

Lebanese President Michel Aoun on Friday urged the international community to provide humanitarian aid to help Syrian refugees return to their homes.

Aoun made the appeal at a reception held in Beirut for a visiting French parliamentary delegation.

“The vast majority of displaced Syrians were forced to leave their country due to the fighting,” he said.

“But with the recent cessation of hostilities, they should now be able to return to their homes,” he added.

Aoun went on to point out that, since 2011, Lebanon had taken in huge numbers of Syrian refugees, which, he said, had had adverse effects on the country’s economy, security and social fabric.

Lebanon, he asserted, “can’t wait until a political solution is reached in Syria before the refugees are allowed back home”.

In coordination with Damascus, Lebanon in recent months has been encouraging the voluntary repatriation of Syrian refugees.

Beirut estimates the number of Syrian refugees still in the country at some 1.5 million, although the UN puts the number at less than one million.