Al-Rahi Mulling Visit to Tehran, Final Decision Not Taken Yet
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi will not visit Iran any time soon despite receiving several invitations, Bkirki sources said in comments published in al-Joumhouria newspaper on Friday.
“If the Patriarch was going to travel to Tehran we would inform the public,” the sources said.
They added that al-Rahi is mulling the invitations he received but he didn't take a final decision so far.
“The campaign staged against the visit was void,” the sources added.
Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Ghazanfar Rokn Abadi reiterated during talks with al-Rahi on Monday his country's invitation for the Patriarch to visit Tehran.
Concerning the recent tension at the Universite Saint Joseph in the Huvelin neighborhood in Beirut, the sources pointed out that al-Rahi is following up the matter.
“Al-Rahi rejects all kinds of provocations, assaults and insulting national symbols,” the sources said, adding that the Patriarch is demanding for justice to take its course.
The sources said that al-Rahi holds politicians responsible over the situation in universities.
Classes have been suspended once again at USJ on Wednesday after a quarrel between the students.
The incident came days after tensions were high in wake of a standoff between Hizbullah and March 14 camp supporters.
Media reports said that Hizbullah supporters surrounded the university on Monday in protest against recent student election results, which led to the standoff and the eventual intervention of the army and security forces to avert any violence.
29 November 2013, 10:11
92
I guess my post sounds silly now as it was in reply to another poster( I believe it was iceman) who wrote in Persian. His post was deleted. How pathetic of Naharnet. I put it in google translator and it contained nothing offensive. Someone is reporting for no reason. I have an idea who that might be. Really pathetic!
29 November 2013, 08:42
510
It's too bad Al Rahi can't visit Saudi Arabia, he will be branded a "kaffir" and spit on.
29 November 2013, 19:36
03
Because Saudi Arabia doesn't allow churches or even the Swiss airlines to fly into ksa bcos of. The cross on its tail. It is impossible for a christain figure head to travel to ksa.
As for the batracks visit to Iran.... It's too early for that and some significant lebanese political gestures are needed before that will be possible. The batrack represents all Maronites around the world and christains in the middle east.
It would be a very brave move that would only happen with the Vatican approval.
29 November 2013, 13:13
19
Why should he go when, according to news spread by the filthy Hariri media outlets or one of its slaves, al-Rahi is about to resign? Perhaps he got the idea to walk in similar steps as our good-for-nothing president-by-parachute who is seeking the extension that we cannot live in continued misery without?
29 November 2013, 21:32
10
i hope if he goes there he will denounce the attacks against christians, the burning of bibles, the imprisonments of priests, and some popular ayatollahs that call christianity as the religion of the evil west corrupting the minds of the iranians in that islamist extremist country so loved by aounis....
