Suleiman Awarded Top Vatican Medal, Urges Maronite Parties to Shun 'Personal Interests'

Former president Michel Suleiman on Monday called on the Maronite political parties to put aside “personal interests” and put an end to the drawn-out presidential vacuum.

“I reiterate my call for all Maronite parties to put aside personal interests and elect a new president immediately,” Suleiman said during a ceremony at the Vatican, where he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Pius IX.

The ceremony was attended by Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi, Vatican Secretary of State Archbishop Pietro Parolin and a number of Holy See dignitaries.

“During my presidential term, I exerted efforts to protect my country from extremism and rifts, which were crowned by the Baabda Declaration that won the support of all Lebanese components,” Suleiman added.

The Lebanese parties “have realized – and will realize – that this Declaration can protect Lebanon and all its sons,” the ex-president said.

He noted that “Lebanon cannot accept to see the Holy Land being emptied of its Christian citizens.”

“Israel's declaration that it is a Jewish state, its attacks against al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and its rejection of the Palestinians' right to establish their own state are all acts that are against the principle of human progress,” Suleiman said, adding that such behavior “cannot lead to peace.”

Turning to the regional events, the former president said “a terrorist fundamentalism that is alien to the Islamic religion has set the region ablaze.”

“This fundamentalism and its bloodshed have forced thousands of Christians to leave their homeland in Iraq and Syria and have repeatedly tried to threaten Christian presence in Lebanon and to change the face of our Levant,” Suleiman went on to say.

But he pointed out that the future of Christians “cannot be secured through foreign military protection or through integration with tyrannical and totalitarian regimes.”

Suleiman is scheduled to meet in the evening with a Lebanese expat delegation at the Antonine institute in Rome.

On Thursday, the ex-president will hold talks with French President Francois Hollande in Paris.

Y.R.