Lebanon PM: No Full Sovereignty Without State Control of War
He spoke at the opening of an exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of Lebanon’s Constitution at the National Library in Beirut, where he urged the full implementation of the Taif Agreement and the continued building of state institutions.
Salam said the accord affirmed that Lebanon is “a final homeland for all its citizens, Arab in identity and affiliation,” and that its system is a “democratic parliamentary” one founded on the separation, balance and cooperation of powers. He added that the agreement wrote key principles into the Constitution’s preamble that have since become part of the very definition of the Lebanese state.
Its most important feature, he said, was that Taif set out a road map for completing the process of state-building. The agreement states that “abolishing political sectarianism is a fundamental national objective” and calls for achieving it through a phased plan, Salam said.
“There is no meaning to popular sovereignty if there are multiple sources of authority outside the institutions that represent the people, and there is no meaning to the rule of law if the law does not apply to everyone,” he said.
“State sovereignty is not complete if sovereign decisions, such as decisions on war, peace and national security, are made outside its constitutional institutions,” he added.
The Taif Agreement was signed by Lebanese political forces in the Saudi city of Taif in 1989 under the sponsorship of Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, ending Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. It redistributed political powers among Lebanon’s religious communities to strengthen political participation, transferring some presidential powers to the Council of Ministers and Parliament and establishing equal political representation between Christians and Muslims.
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