Hundreds became Lebanese under contentious presidential decree

File photo showing demonstrators protesting Lebanese nationality laws banning women from passing on their nationality to children if father is a foreign national. (AFP)

• Wealthy Syrians close to the Damascus regime were given Lebanese nationality by a presidential decree.
• Critics slammed the decree in a country where thousands of people born to Lebanese mothers but foreign fathers remain unable to acquire citizenship.

BEIRUT: Lebanon on Thursday revealed the names of hundreds of people including an Iraqi vice president to receive Lebanese nationality under a controversial presidential decree.
The interior ministry published the list after reports of the May 11 decree emerged last week and the names of wealthy Syrians close to the Damascus regime were leaked to the media.
Critics slammed the secrecy of the decree in a country where thousands of people born to Lebanese mothers but foreign fathers remain unable to acquire citizenship.
The list published on the ministry’s website comprised more than 400 names of various nationalities, including a quarter of Syrians and just over a quarter of Palestinians.
Its most notable include one of Iraq’s two vice presidents, Iyad Allawi, who is also British and whose mother was Lebanese, as well as his wife and three children.
The former prime minister and lawmaker — a Shiite who presents himself as secular — was re-elected in Iraq’s parliamentary polls on May 12.
From Syria, those on the list include the three sons of Syrian steel and flour mogul Farouq Joud, powerful industrialist Khaldun Al-Zoabi and Mazen Mortada, the son of a former Syrian minister.
Under Lebanese law, foreign businessmen are not permitted to invest in Lebanon without local partners.
Foreigners can only be naturalized by presidential decree, signed by the prime minister and interior minister.
Naturalization is controversial in the tiny Mediterranean state, where power is shared according to religious parity.
Fears of upsetting that fragile demographic balance are often cited as the reason Lebanese women cannot pass their nationality onto children born to foreign fathers.