Sfeir backs 1559 and calls for impartial observers to monitor elections

Daily Star/Friday, January 28, 2005/Linda Dahdah

Posted on 02/07/05   10:00 am

Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir stressed his support for UN Security Council Resolution 1559, and reiterated his call for impartial observers to monitor May's parliamentary elections.

Speaking from Paris on Thursday in an interview with the Lebanese Broadcast Corporation International where he has been on an official visit for a week, Sfeir said he supported the implementation of Resolution 1559.

Sfeir - who is the unofficial patron of the Christian opposition Qornet Shehwan Gathering - also said he wished "no competition to exist within the opposition as it would weaken it."

"We wish the situation to go back to normal and for the (Lebanese) people not to feel marginalized in their own country; and that their country is actually not theirs," Sfeir said.

He added that "normally there is a neutral government consisting of lawyers, judges or politicians who are not candidates and who fairly supervise the electoral process. They then form a new government."

"Only this time, we don't think that the government will change, this is why we need observers," he said.

Sfeir, who is expected to visit French President Jacques Chirac on Friday, stressed the importance of having observers as "at least 20 of the government's members are candidates and they will do whatever they can to win the elections."

Comparing the Lebanese parliamentary elections to the latest Palestinian elections, which he claimed "calmly" took place on Jan. 9, under the supervision of more than 500 observers, Sfeir said that there was no reason why there should not be any supervision.

"The monitors do not have to be foreign; they could be Lebanese as well," he said.

Commenting on the case of jailed former leader of the disbanded Lebanese Forces, Sfeir said that Samir Geagea was not the only one who participated in the Lebanese civil war and that all men should be treated as equals.

As to exiled, former army General Michel Aoun - whom the prelate is expected to meet Saturday - Sfeir said that like any other Lebanese he had the right to return to his country.

Asked if he would discuss these issues with Chirac, Sfeir said that these were strictly domestic questions and they would be solved in Lebanon.