BEIRUT: Cabinet convened Thursday in the absence of four key ministers and confirmed that efforts were ongoing to secure the release of 25 Lebanese captives, despite the sluggish pace of negotiations.
During the meeting, Prime Minister Tammam Salam confirmed that the crisis cell was continuing to work to secure the release of the captives, although negotiations were “difficult, complicated and slow,” Information Minister Ramzi Joreige said after Thursday’s session.
Those absent from the sessions included Future Movement ministers of interior and justice, Nouhad Machnouk and Ashraf Rifi, who were in Saudi Arabia for meetings with their party leader, Saad Hariri. Rifi, however, joined the session upon his return to Lebanon, several hours after it had started.
Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil and Telecommunications Minister Boutros Harb were also out of the country on an official visit.
Salam opened the meeting by reiterating the need to elect a new president of the republic as soon as possible, Joreige said. The five-hour session ended without agreement over controversial files, including the licensing of new faculties, the telecoms bids or waste management.
Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb was pessimistic with respect to settling the issue of waste management anytime soon, warning that “garbage will be piling up across Lebanon after Jan. 15,” the date he had set to close down the Naameh landfill which he said would be full.
While discussion over the waste management file was postponed to the next session, scheduled for Tuesday due to the Christmas holiday, no agreement was reached over approving licenses for new universities and requests by existing ones to establish new faculties, political sources said.
Before heading to the meeting, Sports and Youth Minister Abdul-Muttaleb al-Hinawi said that the ministers appointed to the Cabinet by former President Michel Sleiman specifically would likely reject the licensing of new universities. Hinawi, Minister for the Displaced Alice Shabtini and Defense Minister Samir Moqbel are against the issuance of university licenses, he said.
The three ministers will continue to reject issuing such licenses until the Cabinet approves a proposal submitted by Charbel Sleiman to then-president Michel Sleiman, in which the former requested approval to build a university in the latter’s hometown of Amchit.
According to Education Minister Elias Bou Saab, Moqbel was the first to express his opposition to the licensing of new universities.
The education minister also quoted Moqbel as saying that the rejection of Sleiman’s proposal was unjustifiable because it had met all the conditions for approval.
The education minister informed The Daily Star of a Cabinet decision to approach the university file gradually, by limiting the number of university license approvals to just two per session. Approval for PIGIER, the Lebanese French University’s license, was listed on the session’s agenda because the institution had been operating for more than 80 years, Bou Saab said.
Bou Saab ruled out any chance that progress would be made on the university file anytime soon.
“We know that [the approval of a] clause to create new faculties will not pass,” Bou Saab said, hinting that the issue has taken a political turn.
The 73-item agenda did not include the divisive telecoms file. Ministers are at odds over approving a bid document listing the criteria in the next call to select new companies to manage the sector.
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