BEIRUT: Future MP Fouad Siniora held talks Friday with U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, who has been meeting with Lebanese politicians to assure them of the international community’s support for Lebanon’s stability as the country faces threats from Syria’s Islamist militants.
“It was a useful meeting during which I was briefed on his [Siniora’s] evaluation of the situation in Lebanon and the Syrian conflict’s repercussions on the country and the region in general,” de Mistura said after the meeting which was also attended by U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumby.
De Mistura arrived in Lebanon Thursday as part of a regional tour aimed at promoting a political solution to end the raging war in Syria.
He has met with several government officials and Lebanese politicians, including Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, Sheikh Naim Qassem.
Separately, Siniora, a former prime minister and head of the Future bloc in Parliament, issued a statement strongly condemning the attack on an Army bus in north Lebanon in which a soldier was killed Friday, calling on the security forces to act quickly to apprehend the culprits and punish them severely.
“We strongly and utterly denounce the attack on the Lebanese Army in Bireh, in Akkar, and present our sincerest condolences to the Army, the people of the north and the family of martyr Jamal Jean al-Hashem,” Siniora said.
Siniora said the 19-year-old private was a martyr of Lebanon and the Future Movement and that the tragedy that hit his family was also a national tragedy.
“We call on the security forces to arrest the culprits and inflict on them a just (severe) punishment,” Siniora said, stressing his party’s total support for the state and its military and security institutions in the confrontation against terrorism.
Hashem was killed and several other soldiers wounded early Friday when their military bus came under fire along the road in Bireh in the northern Akkar province.
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