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Berri to Asharq Al-Awsat: US Draft Proposal on Maritime Deal is ‘Positive’

US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea (L) presents a letter to Lebanon's Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri (R) during their meeting at Berri's house in Beirut, Lebanon, 01 October 2022. EPA/WAEL HAMZEH
US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea (L) presents a letter to Lebanon's Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri (R) during their meeting at Berri's house in Beirut, Lebanon, 01 October 2022. EPA/WAEL HAMZEH
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Berri to Asharq Al-Awsat: US Draft Proposal on Maritime Deal is ‘Positive’

US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea (L) presents a letter to Lebanon's Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri (R) during their meeting at Berri's house in Beirut, Lebanon, 01 October 2022. EPA/WAEL HAMZEH
US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea (L) presents a letter to Lebanon's Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri (R) during their meeting at Berri's house in Beirut, Lebanon, 01 October 2022. EPA/WAEL HAMZEH

US mediator Amos Hochstein has presented a written proposal for maritime boundary demarcation between Lebanon and Israel that establishes a qualitative breakthrough in the indirect negotiations between the two enemy states.

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri had labeled the proposal as a “draft deal” that meets Lebanon's demands.

“In principle, it meets Lebanese demands which refuse to give any effect to the maritime agreement on land borders,” Berri told Asharq Al-Awsat minutes after US Ambassador Dorothy Shea left his office.

A Lebanese committee including Deputy Parliament Speaker Elias Bou Saab, Director General of the Presidency Antoine Choucair, Parliament Speaker Advisor Ali Hamdan, and a technical army officer will meet in the coming 24 hours, Asharq Al-Awsat learned.

The committee will review the notes of Lebanese officials regarding the proposal and present amendments if the need arises.

Bou Saab, who is also Lebanon’s lead negotiator on the maritime border dispute with Israel, said that the atmosphere is more “positive” than ever.

“We are waiting for the committee meeting, which will be held after translating the agreement into Arabic, to put forward the Lebanese comments on it,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat, affirming that amendments will be made to the draft proposal.

“The US ambassador confirmed that the text is not final, and therefore subject to amendment,” Bou Saab revealed. However, the deputy parliament speaker stressed that the amendments to be presented by Lebanon will be “extraneous.”

Bou Saab highlighted that the proposal was mainly “agreed upon,” but stressed that it still needed technical and legal translation.

According to him, the agreement proposal represents the yield of a “unified Lebanese position.”

“Things seem very positive,” Shea commented after meeting Berri, who when asked if the development is any success said it was good for a start.

“The 10-page agreement is written in English and requires studying before presenting a final response,” explained Berri, pointing out that he, President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Najib Mikati were reviewing the proposal with their aides.

After revision, Aoun, Berri and Mikati will consult with one another before giving an answer to the US-brokered deal.

If all goes well, Lebanon and Israel will sign the deal in the border city of Naqoura, Berri asserted, as this is per the framework agreement he reached with the US last year.

Sources familiar with Shea’s meetings told Asharq Al-Awsat that a tripartite meeting will take place in the middle of next week to agree on the official Lebanese response.

The same sources revealed that the US wants a deal to be concluded as soon as possible, i.e. within the next two weeks.

Shea had handed each of Aoun, Berri and Mikati a copy of Hochstein’s written proposal.

The Lebanese presidency had affirmed that Aoun met with Shea and received the written proposal from Hochstein for the demarcation of the maritime border with Israel.

Aoun then contacted Berri and Mikati for a consultation on the US proposal. He discussed with the two “how to move forward to provide a Lebanese response as soon as possible.”

This is the first time since the start of indirect negotiations between Lebanon and Israel two years ago that a written letter has been submitted by the US regarding the demarcation of maritime borders.

After a months-long stalemate, the file gained some momentum after a production and storage vessel arrived near the disputed Karish field last June.

Indirect negotiations between Lebanon and Israel started in 2020. They stopped in May 2021.

Originally, talks were supposed to discuss an 860-square-kilometer disputed area which is defined by borders known as “line 23,” according to a map sent by Lebanon to the United Nations in 2011.

However, Lebanon later considered that the map was based on wrong estimates and demanded that an additional 1,430 square kilometers be considered, including parts of the Karish field.

After the arrival of the gas extraction platform off the Israeli coast, Lebanon called on Hochstein to resume negotiations.

The Mediterranean nation also presented a new offer for demarcating borders without including the Karish gas field. It, however, included the Qana gas field.

Reaching an agreement would facilitate the exploration of oil resources within Lebanon’s territorial waters.

Lebanese authorities are counting on the presence of oil reserves as this could help their country to overcome a catastrophic economic collapse that’s been going on for nearly three years.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah lauded the US-mediated draft proposal to resolve a maritime border dispute between Israel and Lebanon as “a very important step.”

In a change of tone, Nasrallah said that Lebanon’s state officials are the ones to decide on the proposal. He had hinted at escalation several times previously.

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Interviews

Goldrich to Asharq Al-Awsat: No US Withdrawal from Syria

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
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Goldrich to Asharq Al-Awsat: No US Withdrawal from Syria

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich has told Asharq Al-Awsat that the US does not plan to withdraw its forces from Syria.

The US is committed to “the partnership that we have with the local forces that we work with,” he said.

Here is the full text of the interview.

Question: Mr. Goldrich, thank you so much for taking the time to sit with us today. I know you are leaving your post soon. How do you assess the accomplishments and challenges remaining?

Answer: Thank you very much for the chance to talk with you today. I've been in this position for three years, and so at the end of three years, I can see that there's a lot that we accomplished and a lot that we have left to do. But at the beginning of a time I was here, we had just completed a review of our Syria policy, and we saw that we needed to focus on reducing suffering for the people in Syria. We needed to reduce violence. We needed to hold the regime accountable for things that are done and most importantly, from the US perspective, we needed to keep ISIS from reemerging as a threat to our country and to other countries. At the same time, we also realized that there wouldn't be a solution to the crisis until there was a political process under resolution 2254, so in each of these areas, we've seen both progress and challenges, but of course, on ISIS, we have prevented the reemergence of the threat from northeast Syria, and we've helped deal with people that needed to be repatriated out of the prisons, and we dealt with displaced people in al-Hol to reduce the numbers there. We helped provide for stabilization in those parts of Syria.

Question: I want to talk a little bit about the ISIS situation now that the US troops are still there, do you envision a timeline where they will be withdrawn? Because there were some reports in the press that there is a plan from the Biden administration to withdraw.

Answer: Yeah. So right now, our focus is on the mission that we have there to keep ISIS from reemerging. So I know there have been reports, but I want to make clear that we remain committed to the role that we play in that part of Syria, to the partnership that we have with the local forces that we work with, and to the need to prevent that threat from reemerging.

Question: So you can assure people who are saying that you might withdraw, that you are remaining for the time being?

Answer: Yes, and that we remain committed to this mission which needs to continue to be pursued.

Question: You also mentioned the importance of humanitarian aid. The US has been leading on this. Are you satisfied with where you are today on the humanitarian front in Syria?

Answer: We remain committed to the role that we play to provide for humanitarian assistance in Syria. Of the money that was pledged in Brussels, we pledged $593 million just this past spring, and we overall, since the beginning of the conflict, have provided $18 billion both to help the Syrians who are inside of Syria and to help the refugees who are in surrounding countries. And so we remain committed to providing that assistance, and we remain keenly aware that 90% of Syrians are living in poverty right now, and that there's been suffering there. We're doing everything we can to reduce the suffering, but I think where we would really like to be is where there's a larger solution to the whole crisis, so Syrian people someday will be able to provide again for themselves and not need this assistance.

Question: And that's a perfect key to my next question. Solution in Syria. you are aware that the countries in the region are opening up to Assad again, and you also have the EU signaling overture to the Syrian regime and Assad. How do you deal with that?

Answer: For the United States, our policy continues to be that we will not normalize with the regime in Syria until there's been authentic and enduring progress on the goals of resolution 2254, until the human rights of the Syrian people are respected and until they have the civil and human rights that they deserve. We know other countries have engaged with the regime. When those engagements happen, we don't support them, but we remind the countries that are engaged that they should be using their engagements to push forward on the shared international goals under 2254, and that whatever it is that they're doing should be for the sake of improving the situation of the Syrian people.

Question: Let's say that all of the countries decided to talk to Assad, aren’t you worried that the US will be alienated in the process?

Answer: The US will remain true to our own principles and our own policies and our own laws, and the path for the regime in Syria to change its relationship with us is very clear, if they change the behaviors that led to the laws that we have and to the policies that we have, if those behaviors change and the circumstances inside of Syria change, then it's possible to have a different kind of relationship, but that's where it has to start.

Question: My last question to you before you leave, if you have to pick one thing that you need to do in Syria today, what is it that you would like to see happening today?

Answer: So there are a number of things, I think that will always be left and that there are things that we will try to do, to try to make them happen. We want to hold people accountable in Syria for things that have happened. So even today, we observed something called the International Day for victims of enforced disappearances, there are people that are missing, and we're trying to draw attention to the need to account for the missing people. So our step today was to sanction a number of officials who were responsible for enforced disappearances, but we also created something called the independent institution for missing persons, and that helps the families, in the non-political way, get information on what's happened. So I'd like to see some peace for the families of the missing people. I'd like to see the beginning of a political process, there hasn't been a meeting of the constitutional committee in two years, and I think that's because the regime has not been cooperating in political process steps. So we need to change that situation. And I would, of course, like it's important to see the continuation of the things that we were talking about, so keeping ISIS from reemerging and maintaining assistance as necessary in the humanitarian sphere. So all these things, some of them are ongoing, and some of them remain to be achieved. But the Syrian people deserve all aspects of our policy to be fulfilled and for them to be able to return to a normal life.