Cabinet Session to be Held at Grand Serail, Tackle Syrian Refugees Crisis

A cabinet session set to be held at the Baabda Palace on Friday was moved to the Grand Serail after sharp disputes loomed on the appointment of the Military Council as ministers will tackle the establishment of a cell to follow up the ongoing Syrian refugees crisis.

Ministerial sources said in remarks published in al-Liwaa newspaper that the session will be held at the Grand Serail to avert any possible dispute, which was on the agenda of the ministerial meet.

According to information obtained by the daily, the Free Patriotic Movement ministers, who are loyal to MP Michel Aoun, rejected any appointment at the Military Council before the end of President Michel Suleiman and Army Commander Gen. Jean Qahwaji's tenures.

The newspaper said that a meeting held between Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Suleiman at the Baabda Palace on Thursday morning resulted in moving the session to the Grand Serail to avoid the appointments controversy.

The session was reportedly Suleiman's penultimate cabinet meeting before the end of his tenure on May 25.

On May 15, the cabinet made a series of appointments in a four-hour session.

Concerning the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis, Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq told An Nahar newspaper that the cabinet will mull the formation of a “small cell” headed by Salam to set a fixed policy regarding the problem.

Mashnouq said that a meeting for the ministerial committee tasked with following up the conditions of the Syrian refugees that was held at the Grand Serail on Thursday focused on “ways to unify the policies.”

Al-Liwaa newspaper said that the meeting stressed the importance of “organizing the entrance of Syrian refugees to Lebanon and their distribution through the establishment of camps along the border.”

Lebanon has not signed the international refugee convention, but had generally kept its border open to people fleeing the conflict in Syria despite the scale of the influx.

Lebanon hosts more refugees from Syria than any other country, with 52,000 Palestinians among a total of more than a million. It now has the highest refugee population per capita in the world.

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