The absence of a Lebanese President from the Arab League Summit on Friday due to the continuous vacancy in this position for more than seven months does not mean the absence of this file.
This article was originally published in and translated from Lebanese newspaper Nidaa al-Watan.
Sources told "Nidaa al-Watan" that a Gulf trend has emerged to be discussed behind the scenes of the summit, which will start on Friday. Efforts made so far to end the vacancy in the Presidency will be addressed.
These data were accompanied by information stating that the five-party meeting, which began its launch in New York last year and was completed later in Paris, has exhausted its purposes, and therefore the Lebanese presidential file will practically be retrieved from France in coordination with the United States, which means activating the role of Qatar in coordination with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Simultaneously, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will participate in the summit; he will sit in Syria's seat in the Arab League, which has been vacant for 12 years.
Al-Assad's return was accompanied by hopes that this return would be auspicious for the millions of refugees. However, these hopes soon collapsed before al-Assad's plane landed at Jeddah airport.
As for Lebanon, which will be represented at the summit by Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, it is not clear what his approach will be to the issue of Syrian refugees, amid indications that the priority of the official Lebanese side to return the relations to normal with the Assad regime, and not how the latter will restore more than two million refugees in Lebanon to their homes after they turned into an explosive crisis that puts Lebanon on the brink of an unprecedented humanitarian, living and demographic crisis.
Additionally, the clearest position on the Syrian regime's refusal to restrict it to the obligations of the return of the refugees to their homes came in the words of its Foreign Minister, Faisal Mekdad, on the sidelines of a preparatory meeting for the summit held by the foreign ministers of Arab countries in Jeddah.
In response to a question about "conditions for reconstruction and the return of refugees,"
Mekdad said: "We did not beg, and we will not do so […], and we waged a war against terrorism. Whoever wants help is welcome," refusing to talk about "conditions."
In response to another question, he said that Assad "will come to attend this summit, God willing."
The refugee crisis was present in side discussions held by
Mekdad with his Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Bou Habib.
Mekdad said, according to statements reported by the Syrian Arab News Agency SANA: "We emphasized that the Syrian refugees must return to their homeland, and this return requires capabilities."
About 5.5 million registered Syrian refugees live in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt, according to the United Nations.
"It is important to remember that Assad's return to the Arab League is a symbolic measure to begin the process of ending his regional isolation," Anna Jacobs, Senior Gulf analyst at International Crisis Group, told AFP.
She continues: "In many ways, it is the beginning of political normalization, but it will be important to monitor whether this will be accompanied by economic normalization, especially on the part of the Gulf Arab countries?"