S/PV.2475 Security Council

I should like to inform members of the Council that I have received a letter from the representative of Lebanon in which he requests to be invited to participate in the discussion of the item on the agenda. In conformity with the usual practice, I propose, with the consent of the Council, to invite that representative to participate in the discussion, without the right to vote, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Charter and rule 37 of the provisional rules of procedure. At the invitation of the President, Mr. T&i (Lebanon) took a place at the Council table.

The Council is meeting today in response to the request contained in the letter dated 9 September from the representative of Lebanon to the President of the Council. I should also like to draw the attention of members of the Council to the following documents: S/15953, containing a letter dated 2 September from the representative of Lebanon to the Secretary- Genera!; S/15956, containing the report of the Secretary- Genera! on the situation in the Beirut area. 3. The first speaker is the representative of Lebanon. I should like to acknowledge the presence at the Council table of the Special Envoy of Lebanon, Mr. Ghassan Tutni, on whom I now call.

Mr. President, it is always reassuring to find a familiar face in the Chair when the Council meets to consider dramatic events. I should like to thank you, and members of the Council, for the prompt response to our request to consider the question of Lebanon and also for allowing me to speak. Though I am an outsider now, I pray that the Council will accept an added expression of congratulations on your able and wise handling, during your presidency, of the extremely sensitive issues which have put United Nations solidarity and efficacity to a most strenuous test. May I also add that my year of absence since we last worked together on the Lebanese question has not diluted my feeling of appreciation for your persona! support and your country’s concern in those most dramatic days-and nights as we!!. 5. Tragedy is still hovering over Lebanon. It is now the eighth or tenth year of violence, bloodshed, murder and destruction in a small country that refuses to die. The Council is a!! too familiar with the facts and I shall not,. while introducing the debate, burden members with a lengthy exposition of details. Allow me therefore to concentrate on a few points that have been the focus of discussions here since the Government of Lebanon wrote to the Secretary-Genera! on 2 September, bringing the case again to the Council’s attention [S/Z5953]. 6. First, what is at stake in Lebanon and what the Council is now called upon to consider is the fate of a country, of a Member State-a founding Member-of the United Nations. Can Lebanon survive; will Lebanon survive; will Lebanon be allowed to survive? That is the question. 7. Our answer, the answer of the Lebanese, is yes, an emphatic and unequivocal yes. Yes, Lebanon will survive, independent, unified and sovereign; yes, Lebanon will overcome tragedy, occupation and destruction; yes, Lebanon will overcome even the bloody wars that are now causing an everyday holocaust of land and people. 8. But Lebanon needs the support of its friends and the confidence of the international community. Lebanon needs to be left alone, alone to itself, to its unique character as a pluralistic society of Moslems and Christians, the only such polity in the world, democratic, liberal and peace-loving. 10. Through resolution after resolution the Security Council, the General Assembly, the League of Arab States, to which we belong, the Movement of Non- Aligned Countries, the Council of Europe and almost everybody else; all have asserted our right and recognized our determination. 11. What is happening in Lebanon now is a consequence of this multiple occupation of a peace-loving country which over the years has become the arena of everyone’s war and everyone’s revolution as well. 12. The quantity and quality of armaments is in itself testimony to the fact that this is not a war of Lebanese against Lebanese. There are tanks of all sizes and shapes, ground-to-ground missiles, heavy-the heaviest imaginable-artillery and all the ammunition that is required. By no stretch of the imagination can one think that such instruments of destruction are freely available to political parties or, even less, to religious communities. 13. but that is not all. The occupying armies-for there hardly can be a different name-friends and foes alike, have allowed military action of a highly visible and destructive nature to be conducted from areas under their control. Armaments and ammunition were freely crossing lines of occupation and check-points, and so were organized militias, highly trained and supported by non- Lebanese forces of various nationalities, a fact which none of the participants is really and seriously interested in denying, through their pronouncements or their behaviour, and which has been proved ‘conclusively by photographs-which I can place at the disposal of the Council-tapes of instructions, prisoners and, alas, by the identity of casualties left on the terrain. 14. Thirdly, the non-Lebanese dimension of the conflict is accentuated by the fact that violence was triggered, predictably, by Israel’s withdrawal from the Shouf after a series of moves that had set the stage for the bloodiest confrontation. Strenuous efforts by friendly Governments have not succeeded in preventing what was predicted and announced. 15. May I add here that it is indeed impossible to expect any confiict in any country to be internal or domestic, as is said, when there are three foreign armies confronting one another and the Government’s own armed forces, let alone thousands of heavily armed and equipped so-called volunteers from far-away lands-and I shall not name any at this stage-who stand ready to militate for causes that are surely unrelated to Lebanon’s constitutional or organic reforms. 17. In his first message to Parliament after he was sworn in, the President of the Republic, Mr.. Amin Gemayel, invited each and all to share in a reform of the system. That invitation became a pressing call, which President Gemayel has been reiterating constantly, in very specific and unequivocal terms, speaking of revising the “political, social and economic structures” of the State. The President also specified the persons and groups that should be associated with him in this design. On 25 August he invited, for the third or fourth time, the leaders of the opposition, one by one, to join hands with him in assuming the “national responsibilities” that were awaiting us all in this task. But he also said that reform should take place within the constitutional process and through the democratic institutions. That was weeks-and then only days-before the latest round of battles. Yet the President’s pressing call did not prevent the outbreak of hostilities at precisely the hour that had been announced from abroad. 18. Surely no one can expect us to believe that the issues at stake, which are related to the development of greater harmony in greater unity, can best be settled by the carnage that is now taking place, or that the deep scars that will be left, the miseries of destroyed cities and endless nights of terror and crime-the miseries of war with all its horror-will leave the Lebanese unaffected. Could it not be that by the same sombre design it is division, and not unity, which is sought, and partition rather than liberation which will be the outcome-the partitioning of Lebanon among the various multiple occupying forces? 19. As the Council meets here, many are those who, with us, are working to save Lebanon. I refer particularly to efforts to mediate and achieve a cessation of hostilities, which will enable the Lebanese to resume a national dialogue. At this very hour, as the Council meets, there are prayers in every church and every mosque in Lebanon: prayers for the dead, but also prayers for the Lebanese, for the living, whatever their religion. In one church in particular, the church of Ant&as, there are prayers also for the future of Lebanon. This is a church where 130 years ago a covenant was concluded between Christians and Moslems, particularly Druses, for the establishment. of a democratic Lebanon, unified and free from foreign domination and foreign intervention. 20. Then, as it does today, Lebanon needed a framework of international-I dare say universal-legitimacy to overcome the projection of external conflicts into its internal structures. That is precisely what we are now asking for, through the necessary, unavoidable first step: a cease-fire, an immediate and effective cessation of all hostilities and the withdrawal of all illegitimate foreign forces. 21. Lebanon and the Lebanese want to be left alone. They want to be left free, free to unite again, to live in peace, to bury their dead and to bury their feuds as well, free to reconstruct their Government and their cities. The meeting rose at 12.45 p.m.