The Guardians of the Cedars Party issued the following weekly communiqué:
Damascus Summit a Failure before it Begins
The decision to boycott the Arab Summit was the right decision, both on grounds of principle and timing.
On principle, merely going to Damascus means making a concession on Lebanon’s dignity and pride to a country which not only refuses to recognize Lebanon’s right to exist, but which has been trying for more than a third of a century to destroy it systematically by sapping its security, political and economic stability, by assassinating its leading figures one after the other, by undermining its constitutional institutions from the presidency to the government and parliament, not to mention its continued support for terrorist and fundamentalist organizations operating from Lebanese soil and its supplying them with weapons and men. One must also recognize that the Arab League was never the correct venue for handling the Lebanese question, particularly the Damascus summit now headed for a failure before it even begins.
We have said it before and we repeat it here: The proper venue for addressing the issue of Lebanon is the UN Security Council. If the government is genuinely looking for solutions to Lebanon’s crisis, it must literally move – all its members included – into the Security Council, sequester itself in it and never leave until it reaches radical solutions coupled with a specific mechanism to implement them on the ground, provided the government has the necessary courage and honesty to describe the crisis in all its facets and angles, and distance itself from the ambiguity, evasiveness and cowardice it has made us accustomed to see.
Any action outside that framework is a waste of time, a prolongation of the crisis, and an indefinite extension of the suffering of the Lebanese people.
Those who have custody of the government must realize that cowardice is the sister of treason and that both lead to the same outcome.
Lebanon, at your service
Abu Arz