Lebanon patriarch rejects military action in Syria

The Daily Star – 2/9/13

BEIRUT: Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai  rejected any military action against Syria  in remarks Sunday following his meeting  with Greek Orthodox Patriarch of the Levant  and Antioch  John X Yazigi.

“We are against any foreign military intervention in Syria or other [means]  that could includes weapons and strikes,” Rai said at Balamand Monastery near  Tripoli.

“The crisis in Syria should be resolved with diplomacy and the tragedies we  are seeing are unacceptable,” he added.

He said the conflicting sides in Syria should look to resolve their disputes  through peaceful means, saying: “Not everything can be resolved using iron and  fire.”

“We don’t want war to erase what we have built in this region and we don’t  want this region to be a means of war,” he said.

Rai also demanded the release of two Syrian bishops kidnapped near a rebel  area.

Aleppo’s Greek Orthodox Archbishop Boulos Yazigi  and Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim  were kidnapped in April by armed  men while they were on their way to Aleppo  from the Turkish border.

Meanwhile, Rai also said Lebanese rival leaders failed to launch  reconciliation or speed up the formation of a new government after recent car  bombings in the past two months.

“If [politicians] had taken courageous and responsible steps in the road of a  sectarian and political reconciliation, a new government, the restart of  national dialogue, and security measures to limit the proliferation of arms, the  relatives of the martyrs of Beirut  and Tripoli  would have been at least consoled,” Rai  said during his Sunday Sermon in Diman, north Lebanon.