Lebanon 'no longer has the luxury of wasting time and opportunities': Salam

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Friday that Lebanon "no longer has the luxury of wasting time and opportunities. We have already lost many, including the Taif Agreement, the failure to deploy the army in the South in 2000, as well as the management of our political affairs after the Syrian tutelage."

Speaking during his patronage of the “Responsible Citizenship” conference at UNESCO Palace, Salam said that “a better future in this nation is built on a new political culture based on rejecting violence and accepting the other.”

He added that “between the responsibility of the state and the responsibility of the citizen, a relationship is established based on a sincere partnership that restores the trust that has been lost.”

He emphasized that “a state is not governed by fear but by trust,” and while Lebanon has missed many opportunities, “it still possesses the elements of strength needed to rise again.”

The Taif Agreement, signed in Saudi Arabia to end the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), outlined a plan to restore full state sovereignty. It called for the Lebanese state to reassert control over all its territory through its army and required all domestic and foreign militias to disband and surrender their weapons within six months.

But these measures were never fully carried out. In the early 1990s, as the Taif framework struggled, Lebanon fell under Assad’s Syrian trusteeship, delaying militia dissolution and blocking full state control, especially in the South.

This failure resurfaced in 2000 when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon. Under Taif, the Lebanese Army should have deployed immediately, but political paralysis and Syrian influence prevented it. Hezbollah stepped into the vacuum, further delaying the implementation of Taif.

The Lebanese authorities have now committed to disarming all militias, including Hezbollah, and have started dismantling its infrastructures in the South, to which the party hasn't opposed until now.

The Lebanese Army is implementing a plan according to which, after the South, it will start disarming Hezbollah in other regions, though the party rejects this.

Salam’s comments also come at a time when he has repeatedly said that Lebanon is ready to hold talks with Israel and would seek U.S. assistance to facilitate negotiations, as he did in an interview published Thursday by Bloomberg. He said the reasons why Tel Aviv has yet to respond to this call for talks remain "a puzzle" to him.

President Joseph Aoun, for his part, has repeatedly stated that negotiations remain the only way to restore stability in the South and in the country. In early November, Hezbollah reiterated its opposition to disarmament and voiced its refusal to “political negotiations” with Israel.