Aoun Signs Decree Promoting Army and Security Officers
President Michel Aoun has signed on Thursday the officers’ promotion decree of the army, security forces, general security, state security and customs.
The signing comes one day after State officials, Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri and PM Saad Hariri, agreed to end a row over an officers seniority decree by signing a new decree merging the disputed decree with the stalled promotions decree.
LBCI said although reports said the decrees were signed on Wednesday, but “it seems that the Premier forgot to sign the promotions decree which delayed the whole procedure until Thursday.”
Aoun will therefore “sign the decrees today,” it said.
As part of a solution the officials agreed in a tripartite meeting at the Baabda Palace that the decrees will carry the signatures of Aoun, Hariri, Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil and Defense Minister Yaacoub Sarraf.
The contentious seniority decree grants one-year seniority to a number of officers. Speaker Nabih Berri was infuriated after it was signed by Aoun, Hariri and Sarraf without being referred to the finance minister to place his own signature on it.
Berri and Khalil had insisted that the decree should have also carried the finance minister's signature. Aoun and his aides argued that the decree did not require Khalil's signature because it did not entail any “financial burden,” a point Berri and officials close to him had argued against.
The officers in question were undergoing their first year of officer training at the Military Academy when Syrian forces ousted Aoun's military government from Baabda in 1990. They were suspended by the pro-Damascus authorities until 1993 before they resumed their officer training course as second-year cadets.
Source: Naharnet
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/241917 |