U.N. to Send Envoy to Lebanon to Address Means to Deliver Aid to Civilians in Syria

Lebanon's permanent Ambassador to United Nations Nawwaf Salam revealed on Thursday that the international organization will send an envoy to Lebanon to address ways in which to deliver aid to civilians in Syria, reported the daily An Nahar on Friday.

Commenting on the development, caretaker Social Affairs Minister Wael Abou Faour told the daily: “This step, should it materialize, will help ease the burden Lebanon has been made to carry regarding the Syrian crisis.”

Earlier on Thursday, the minister had lamented the failure to set up a development fund to help Lebanon support the burden of Syrian refugees, adding however that setting up such a fund would need months of planning while Lebanon needs immediate assistance in the health and eduction fields.

It seems however that the international community will not send the necessary assistance to Lebanon any time soon, he noted, citing a recent meeting he held in Geneva on the refugee crisis.

Furthermore, Abou Faour said that Lebanon rejects loans to help the refugees and it is instead focusing its efforts on grants even though their transfer to credit funds will take some time.

In addition, he revealed that the international community had cited Hizbullah's power in Lebanon as a deterrent to sending aid the country.

The minister said however: “The party is part of Lebanese society and the Lebanese government.”

“The government has never obstructed any attempt to aid the refugees,” he declared.

Abou Faour pleaded on Monday for more international support to tackle the huge influx of refugees from the war-ravaged country, warning the burden could destabilize the whole region.

He was speaking in Geneva alongside the foreign ministers of Jordan, Turkey and Iraq at a special meeting of the U.N. refugee agency focused on how to better distribute the burden of the swelling Syria conflict, which since March 2011 has killed over 100,000 people and forced more than 2.1 million to flee into neighboring countries.

Lebanon counted by Monday evening some 769,000 Syrians registered or in the process of registering as refugees, the minister said while pointing out that on Monday morning the number had been 763,000.

Including all the unregistered Syrians, the actual number is around 1.3 million, he said, or about 30 percent of the Lebanese population.

Despite the massive influx and Lebanon's many appeals for international help, "nothing of significance has materialized so far. Not one hospital. Not one school," Abou Faour said.

While insisting Beirut would keep the borders open to anyone truly in need of humanitarian assistance, he acknowledged that some screening had begun to reduce the numbers of people crossing into the country.

If the international community does not step up and do more, it risks "losing a major ally in Lebanon," he said, warning "the price of shouldering the Syrian crisis is proving too much to bear."