UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis Remarks after Meeting Prime Minister Saad Hariri

I am very grateful that His Excellency the Prime Minister is giving me his time frequently and regularly. This is very important as well due to my forthcoming meeting with the Security Council of the United Nations next week in New York. So I wanted to check some messages and the most important message that I received from His Excellency the Prime Minister but also I confirm on my side is how to support the Government, how to support His Excellency, other ministries and of course political forces in making sure that the reform programme of the Government proceeds forward, that there is no disruption, no diversion from the objectives of reform, the delivery of services to the people, improving the environment, including as regards fighting corruption, by any other topics that might create disruption. So it is very important to make sure that the Government can proceed with reforms.

One of the most important steps is to make sure that the budget of the country is adopted as soon as possible but also the budget is a reformed one that would address, including such important issues as gradual reduction of fiscal deficit etc. etc. And here I pledged the support of the international community. I will discuss before my departure with the critical international partners of the country how to provide more support for the reform programme.

There were other topics on the agenda. I also acknowledged the very strong performance of the country and His Excellency at the Brussels III conference with messages that confirm an urgent need to ensure safe, voluntary and dignified return of Syrian refugees home, according to the international humanitarian norms but as soon as possible under these norms and full respect of these norms, to treat this as a humanitarian issue. And here again expectation that the UN and the humanitarian community will continue in facilitating these returns as much as possible. Another very important message was also to support the host communities here in Lebanon. Presence of refugees is a heavy burden and there is a need to support also communities that are temporarily still hosting them.

There were many other topics I believe about my discussions with visiting delegations, including Under-Secretary-General (Jean-Pierre) Lacroix who was here to inspect UNIFIL operations and we discussed all the measures that are important to keep calm and to make sure that occasional problems are not creating any problems of a bigger nature.

All in all, it was a very good and very substantive meeting and I am grateful to His Excellency that he gave me his time.