President Michel Aoun in an interview with LBCI a few days before his term ends, Oct. 27, 2022. Credit: Lebanese Presidency/Twitter)
In an interview with the TV channel LBCI on Thursday night, President Michel Aoun said he will give the Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati until Oct. 31 to form a government, "otherwise I will sign the [caretaker] government's resignation." Aoun however did not explain what this means on a legal level.
Aoun's statements come just days before the end of his term, while the government has been in caretaker status since May. If no new president is elected and no new government formed before the deadline, Lebanon will experience its first double vacancy at the executive level.
Earlier in the day, Aoun signed the final draft of the maritime border agreement with Israel. In an interview with LBCI, Aoun said considered the deal "my gift to the Lebanese before I leave."
"The southern border is now stable and it will not be a source of conflict ... There won’t be war or instability in the region," Aoun added.
When asked if the agreement secures peace with Israel, Aoun said: "The common interest [between the two countries] will force stability. If we go to war, we will destroy ourselves from both sides ... The deal does not achieve peace. A peace deal achieves peace."
Commenting on the scheduled Lebanese visit to Syria to discuss the maritime border, which was canceled by the Syrians due to "prior engagements," Aoun said the Syrian authorities have the "desire" to achieve a maritime border agreement, but "we don’t know if they were ready or if they had the time."
Repatriation of Syrian refugees
On Wednesday, Lebanon began implementing its plan to repatriate Syrian refugees, with a little over 700 refugees boarding buses bound for Syria. Rights groups have criticized the returns as potentially dangerous, but Lebanese officials have repeatedly insisted that the returns are voluntary.
"When we say it is a consensual repatriation, we mean it. Syria is not putting any condition to their return unless they were criminals," Aoun said during his speech Thursday night.
Aoun accused the international community of wanting to "merge" the Syrian nationals in Lebanon, meaning it wants to grant them Lebanese citizenship.
"The international community communicated this idea to our ministers [but] such conversations would not be pleasant," Aoun said.
“In enthusiastically facilitating these returns, the Lebanese authorities are knowingly putting Syrian refugees at risk of suffering from heinous abuse,” human rights watchdog Amnesty International said earlier this month.
General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim responded to international criticisms on Tuesday, claiming the trips are in “the interest of the Lebanese people.”
Syrian refugees in Lebanon reportedly face discriminatory practices including “arrests at checkpoints … raids on camps, adoption of stricter movement rules, and tensions between host and refugee communities," the Access Center for Human Rights, a refugees watchdog group in Lebanon, told L'Orient Today in August.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that President Michel Aoun delivered these remarks in a speech; in fact, the president's comments came during an interview with the TV channel LBCI. This article has been modified to rectify this inaccuracy.