BEIRUT: The contribution offered by the international community to help Lebanon cope with the influx of Syrian refugees to the country is not enough, President Michel Sleiman said Friday.
“The financial contribution [of donor countries] is not enough and the participation in sharing the number of refugees is not enough,” said Sleiman in a meeting at Baabda Palace with the International Support Group for Lebanon to follow up on decisions were taken last month at a meeting in New York.
“Shelters [for refugees] inside Syria were not established and the path of the Geneva [negotiations] seems to remain obstructed,” he added.
Sleiman told the ambassadors that the recent meeting in New York was successful but that the decisions resulting from the international meeting still needed to be implemented.
“There is a consensus that the New York meeting was successful in both its form and content, and what is required now is to follow up on the important conclusions that were issued at the meeting and the strategy and programs that should be adopted to implement them, he said.
“These conclusions are a roadmap to what can be done,” he added.
The president also called for holding a new conference for donor countries and further meetings for the International Support Group for Lebanon to follow up on the New York meeting.
An international meeting at the U.N. General Assembly in September pledged $339 million in additional humanitarian aid in response to the Syrian crisis, including $74 million for Lebanon to support refugees.
The U.N. is assisting over 750,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon and there are hundreds of thousands more people who are uncounted.
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18/10/2013
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