Omar Al-Bardan wrote in “Al-Liwaa”: Lebanon is trying to invest the Arab and international support enjoyed by the Covenant and its government, in consolidating the foundations of the institutional state, by implementing the decisions of the Council of Ministers regarding arms exclusivity, in addition to correcting relations with Syria, and removing the impurities that have plagued it in the past decades.
The importance of this external support for Lebanon is clearly evident in the remarkable praise by US President Donald Trump for President Aoun, and the army’s plan to restrict weapons.
If the President of the Republic has clearly expressed Lebanon’s official position that it desires to take the path of negotiation with Israel, with the aim of finding solutions to the outstanding issues, it is not unlikely that the American administration will embrace the Lebanese desire expressed by President Aoun, to work to market this idea to the Israelis to open negotiation channels with Lebanon and Israel, similar to the indirect negotiations sponsored by Washington, which led to an agreement on maritime demarcation between the two countries.
In this context, American diplomatic sources say that President Trump may not be satisfied with what he achieved in Gaza, and therefore Washington will try, by pushing for negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, to remove the existing differences between the two countries.
In addition, and in light of the significant development witnessed in the file of Lebanese-Syrian relations, there has been significant progress at the judicial level with regard to the outstanding issues between the two countries. This is what emerged as a result of the meetings that took place with the participation of the Lebanese and Syrian Ministers of Justice, Adel Nassar and Mazhar Al-Wais. The available data in this regard indicate that the decision of officials in Beirut and Damascus is clear regarding the importance of working to ensure that Lebanese-Syrian relations take advanced steps, putting them on the path to recovery in all respects. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani confirmed to Lebanese officials his country’s desire for relations between the two countries to be at their best. This indicates that a new page has been opened between Lebanon and Syria, on the ruins of the painful past page, in which Lebanon was treated by the Assad regime as a subordinate and not as an independent, sovereign state.
