Press Digest for Monday January 07, 2013

The following are summaries of today's major stories published in the Arabic press. LBCI does not edit press digest articles for content, giving English-language readers insight into the various views expressed in newspapers across the Arab world.

• Marouni: Sleiman’s decision to cancel dialogue session is a normal thing

Kataeb party MP Elie Marouni expressed his pessimism towards the possibility of the parliamentary sub-committee reaching an agreement regarding the new electoral law, “due to the wide difference between the positions of its members; without any party trying to reach common ground or centrist solutions.”            

In a statement to al-Seyassah al-Kuwaitia Newspaper, Marouni hoped that the upcoming elections would be held in accordance with a new electoral law, other than that of the 60s, noting that President Michel Sleiman’s decision to cancel the dialogue session “is a normal thing,” since the dialogue cannot be complete without the participation of all the parties.

On the other hand, Marouni stressed the need to control the borders and establish camps that are subject to constant surveillance in order to be able to count the refugees, locate them and ensure necessary assistance, pointing that the government must set up a plan by which it can make sure that the number of displaced does not exceed the capabilities of the country.              

• Rai’s stances trigger discontent in Vatican

Al-Seyassah al-Kuwaitia Newspaper reported that Maronite sources in the Vatican compared the Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Beshara Boutros Rai to the “Mufti of Baath party” of Syria (Ahmad Hassoun), or Ayatollah Shariatmadari of Iran.                

The sources noted that Rai chose a place and a time to launch his positions without taking into consideration the feelings of the Christian community in particular and the Sunni community of Lebanon in general.                   

In this context, the same sources pointed that, just as President Bashar Assad, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and all of Iran and Syria’s allies have chosen Najib Mikati as Prime Minister for the current cabinet to rule during the Syrian revolution for the benefit of the “criminal Baath regime”, they also chose Patriarch Rai as leader for the Maronites during the decay and the fall of Assad’s regime.                

• Al-Halabi: Saleh’s arrest in Beirut airport arbitrary and unlawful

President of the Institution for Democracy and Human Rights, Nabil al-Halabi denounced the arrest of the Member of the General Secretariat of the Syrian National Council Khalil al-Hajj Saleh at Beirut airport on charges of possessing communication devices connected to satellite, describing this act as a political security procedure.                            

In an interview with Acharq al-Awsat daily al-Halabi noted that such an arrest is arbitrary and unlawful, “because detaining any person and preventing him from his freedom cannot be done without a judicial decision,” noting that the Lebanese authorities that claim to adopt the dissociation policy, must stop such actions that confirm that there is coordination between the Lebanese and Syrian governments.