BEIRUT: Security developments in Lebanon were the topic of discussion at meetings between the prime minister and the health minister, the telecommunications minister, and the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia and the European Union Tuesday.
“What happened yesterday was extremely dangerous,” Health Minister Wael Abu Faour said after the meeting with Prime Minister Tammam Salam. “All the political parties and leaders should be responsible enough to limit the actions and the reactions in the streets.”
Faour said the kidnapped soldiers and policeman’s case should be a reason for all the Lebanese to unite, and not “a source of civil strife among [them].”
One day after the kidnappings and road blocks in the Bekaa Valley, Salam was also visited by the outgoing Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awad Asiri and the EU Ambassador Angelina Eichhorst.
State Minister Nabil de Freij attended the meeting with Eichhorst, in which the partnership in development between Lebanon and Europe was also discussed.
Telecommunications Minister Boutros Harb also visited Salam Tuesday, and criticized his political rivals Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement, whose leaders had met earlier in the day.
“The statement should have included a voice of support to the Cabinet and the Army, however it was empty,” Harb said, referring to the statement released after MP Michel Aoun’s visit to Hezbollah’s General Secretary Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
The Bekaa Valley witnessed chaos Monday, after three residents of Arsal and another from Saadnayel were kidnapped by armed groups. The Army performed wide raids and searches Tuesday in an attempt to find the kidnappers, some of whom demanded ransoms, while others acted in response to the kidnapping of servicemen by ISIS in Arsal last month.
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