Abbas from Baabda: Reports About Issuing Passports to Palestinians Not True
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in Lebanon on Monday for talks with Lebanese officials on relations and the plight of Palestinian refugees.
"Reports about issuing passports to Palestinians are not true," Abbas told reporters following a meeting with President Michel Suleiman at Baabda Palace.
"The presence of Palestinians is temporary in Lebanon. We are coordinating security issues with the Lebanese government," he added.
His brief trip comes amid renewed efforts to revive the Middle East peace process and concern among politicians that any deal on the issue of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon would be at the expense of the Lebanese.
In an interview published Monday, Abbas said he categorically rejects the permanent resettlement of hundreds of thousands of refugees in Lebanon.
"Until our problem is solved, we are guests in Lebanon, and we refuse any nation other than our own and any solution other than the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 194," on the Palestinian right to return to their former homeland, Abbas told Al-Liwaa newspaper.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) lists almost 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
But Lebanese and Palestinian officials say the actual number may be as low as 250,000 as UNRWA does not strike off its list those who emigrate.
Most of the refugees who remain live in dire conditions in 12 camps across the country of four million inhabitants.