When Elias Hrawi was elected president of the Lebanese Republic in November 1989, following the assassination of President Rene Mouawad, he found before him a wrecked state.
Hrawi, along with Foreign Minister Fares Boueiz, was aware that the international community was tired of Lebanon and had delegated to Syria the handling of its affairs.
However, the interests of Damascus and Beirut did not always converge. Boueiz told Asharq Al-Awsat that President Hafez al-Assad’s first concern was to prevent the West from being able to lure Lebanon into peace with Israel that would weaken Syria’s position. This was his conclusion from the series of long meetings he held with the Syrian president.
On the regional level, the former foreign minister recounted how he avoided falling into traps, saying that he refused a proposal by then-US President George Bush, at the end of the first meeting of the Madrid Peace Conference, that Lebanon engage in direct bilateral talks with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
Assad’s satisfaction with Lebanon’s performance at the peace conference encouraged Damascus to support the extension of Hrawi’s mandate for three years.
At the beginning of the 1990s, US Secretary of State James Baker visited the capitals of the countries involved in the Madrid Peace Conference. He tried to exclude Lebanon from his tours because the US authorities refused to allow his plane to land at Beirut airport because of Hezbollah’s presence.
Boueiz said he feared that this situation would lead to the country’s political isolation, and kept rejecting American proposals to meet Baker in Amman, Istanbul, Cairo or Athens.
One day, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa called him to say that the Syrian authorities were ready to put the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus at the disposal of the Lebanese officials, in order to hold meetings with Baker. Al-Sharaa said that Damascus was willing to remove the Syrian symbols in the hotel and to allow Lebanese soldiers to take over security in its vicinity during the meeting.
Boueiz declined the offer, after he felt that Washington had used Damascus to embarrass Lebanon and push it to change its position. He insisted on his stance when he received a call on the same matter from Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal.
Following an early morning appointment away from the press, the US ambassador to Beirut, Ryan Crocker, informed the Lebanese Foreign Minister that Baker was ready to come to Lebanon by land from Damascus. Crocker made it clear that the meeting would be canceled immediately if word leaked about its scheduled date. Boueiz suggested holding the meeting at President Hrawi’s residence in Zahle, in the Lebanese Bekaa Valley, and promised to keep it a secret.
On the eve of the meeting, the foreign minister visited Prime Minister Rashid al-Solh and asked him to be ready at 8 am the next morning to attend an important engagement in the Bekaa Valley. Thus, the meeting was held in the city of Zahle, which was considered at the time a success for Lebanese diplomacy.
Asked by Asharq Al-Awsat to describe the cabinet sessions during Hrawi’s term, and then during the tenure of his successor, President Emile Lahoud, Boueiz said that those were marked by Syrian influence.
He explained: “There was no state in 1990 when President Hrawi assumed office.” He added that the country lacked an army, security forces, judiciary, courts, police stations, hospitals, electricity and water.
“There was nothing, not even a village-to-village telephone. It was very clear that the world was tired of Lebanon and entrusted Syria with dealing with its affairs, according to a specific program, which is the Taif Accord. So we were faced with the reality that the whole world was handing us over to Syria,” Boueiz remarked.
The former foreign minister continued: “Syria had allies in the Council of Ministers, some of whom fully adopted its point of view, which sometimes diverged from the interest of the Lebanese state. We were facing a problem, represented by the fact that we needed Syria to help us rebuild the state, dissolve the militias, restructure the army, collect weapons, and deploy the army in all the Lebanese regions that were occupied by the militias. At the same time, Syria is not a charitable institution, but rather has its own accounts, politics, and interests, as well as its own assessment or interpretation of matters.”
The April Understanding
Boueiz recounted the circumstances of the “April 1996 understanding”, saying: “Israel launched an attack on southern Lebanon, and stormed the regions. I was aware from the first moment that Israel had sunk and that it would need a political mechanism to remove it from this quagmire.”
He said that Hervé de Charette, Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, paid him a visit to convey his condolences. But Boueiz told his counterpart that France had a greater than an emotional role, suggesting that he push President Jacques Chirac to engage in a multilateral mechanism, along with the US, Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
“Israel will inevitably need a way out of the swamp into which it has sunk, and there will be a mechanism in which the Americans, the Syrians, the Lebanese and the Israelis will engage. I promise not to accept any mechanism that excludes France, provided that you contact President Jacques Chirac and tell him that you are staying in Lebanon and in the Middle East, perhaps for a month, and that you summon the work team and settle in Beirut, and that you call a private plane to make shuttle tours,” he told De Charette.
The following day, the French foreign minister informed Boueiz of Chirac’s consent and began his visits to the region’s capitals.
“He maintained this approach until we succeeded in imposing on Israel certain withdrawals and a specific regime in the South...” The Lebanese diplomat said.
The extension of Hrawi’s term
Did the performance of Lebanese diplomacy in the Arab-Israeli conflict play a role in the extension of Hrawi’s term?
According to Boueiz, the name of Emile Lahoud had not emerged as a candidate for the presidency of the republic. The second element that played a role in the extension was the Madrid Conference.
“Hafez al-Assad’s greatest obsession and his total attention was directed towards the Arab-Israeli conflict,” he told Asharq Al-Awast. “Hence, the peace process for him was everything, and the reason for his presence in Lebanon... as he wanted to ensure that the country would not be isolated from Syria.”
He noted that the management of the peace negotiations, in which he participated at the time, was reassuring to Assad.
“US Secretary of State James Baker told me that President George Bush wanted to meet with me before he left Madrid for Washington. I asked him about the meeting place and the people who would attend. He replied that those included Baker, Dennis Ross, who is a senior adviser and negotiator and totally sympathetic to Israel, and I think Martin Indyk if I remember correctly, who is also Jewish,” Boueiz recounted.
The Lebanese foreign minister replied, saying that he would be accompanied by Dhafer Al-Hassan, Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ambassadors Jaafar Muawi and Jihad Mortada. He noted that he chose two Shiite figures, to avoid any misinterpretation by the media in Beirut.
The US President’s Proposal
During the meeting, Bush told Boueiz that the peace process in Madrid was a heavy and slow mechanism.
“If you have direct talks with Yitzhak Shamir, the head of the Israeli delegation, it would be faster,” the US president said. Shamir was then the prime minister of Israel.
Boueiz replied: “How do you want me to negotiate with Shamir on this matter? This would be a deviation from the Madrid conference... and will open the door to singling out all the rest of the Arab delegations.”
All of these matters were followed by Hafez al-Assad very carefully, the Lebanese foreign minister remarked.
“Can you believe he watched my speech in Madrid six times on video? Every time he watched it, he would choose some clips, and he would ask me: “By God, where did you get this part from?!”
30 meetings with Al-Assad
Boueiz said that he met Hafez al-Assad more than thirty times. He added that these meetings contributed to creating an atmosphere of trust.
“Hafez al-Assad was afraid, at a time when the peace process was still ongoing, to enter into a new adventure in a new era, while he was satisfied with the performance of Elias Hrawi at the peace conference,” he noted.
When the tenure ended, and the battle for the presidency was raised, Hafez al-Assad approached al-Hrawi, and asked him if he had thought of the name of the next president. The latter said no.
So he replied: “Fares has really proven his worth and wisdom, whether in managing the peace process or in facing pressures... This is a serious and major matter that cannot be taken at risk.”
