BEIRUT, 13 May 2006 — A new PLO representative presented his credentials to Lebanese President Emile Lahoud yesterday, the president’s office said, becoming the Palestinian organization’s first envoy to the country in 13 years. Abbas Zaki replaces Shafiq Al-Hout, who resigned from the mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993 in protest over the Oslo peace accord with Israel.
Lahoud’s office said in a statement that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas empowered Zaki to lead talks between Palestinian factions in Lebanon and the Beirut government. No date has been set for the talks, which will tackle Palestinian pleas to improve the living conditions of refugees in 12 squalid camps, and Lebanon’s demands to disarm pro-Syrian factions based outside the camps. PLO’s office in Beirut was shut down in 1982 after the Israeli invasion and the subsequent evacuation of Palestinian politicians from Lebanon.
Political pressure from Syria, which was at odds with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, thwarted attempts to reopen the office after the Israeli withdrawal from Beirut in 1982. Syria, the dominant force in Lebanon since the middle of the 1975-1990 civil war, ended its 29-year military presence in the country in April 2005, bowing to international pressure two months after the killing of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri.
