BEIRUT, 9 July 2005 — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday the question of disarming Palestinian groups did not come up in a meeting with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. “Frankly, we did not discuss this question. But I will say, generally speaking, that the Palestinians are being hosted temporarily by Lebanon and the law of this country must apply to us as it applies to others,” Abbas said after arriving in Beirut for a two-day meeting with Lebanese leaders.
Abbas’ trip to Lebanon, the first since his election in January, was to focus on boosting relations and UN Resolution 1559, a Lebanese official said.
The Security Council resolution, passed in September 2004, led to Syria’s withdrawal after a 29-year military presence, but other aspects have yet to be fulfilled.
It also calls on Lebanon to extend sovereignty over all its territory and demands the disarmament of Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias, including the Shiite militant group Hezbollah and armed Palestinian factions.
The call has been rebuffed by Hezbollah and Palestinian groups have also refused to lay down their arms. Some 400,000 Palestinians live in 12 refugee camps in Lebanon, where they control their own security. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command is the only major Palestinian movement to maintain military positions outside the refugee camps, where the Lebanese army is forbidden from entering.
“This resolution concerns the Lebanese government, which is free to apply it as it wants,” Abbas said. He arrived in Beirut after meeting Thursday with Syrian President Bashar Assad and the heads of 10 Palestinian militant groups in Damascus in a failed attempt to convince them to join a national unity government overseeing Israel’s August withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine rejected the Palestinian leader’s offer. A similar refusal came earlier in the week from the Hamas movement, which has gained in popular support in recent months and is seen as potent political rival to Abbas’ Fatah faction.
