What did Aoun and Salam tell US delegation?

President Joseph Aoun stressed Tuesday to a visiting U.S. delegation that Lebanon is “fully committed” to the Nov. 27 cessation of hostilities declaration and to the joint U.S.-Lebanese paper that was approved in Cabinet on August 5 and 7 without any selectivity.

The U.S. delegation comprised special envoys to Lebanon Tom Barrack and Morgan Ortagus, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Lindsey Graham, and Representative Joe Wilson.

Aoun also called on the delegation to “continue contacts with all sides, especially with the Arab and Western countries that are friends of Lebanon, to support and speed up the courses of reconstruction and economic revival.”

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam for his part told the delegation that “the course of arms monopolization and the state’s extension of its authority and control of the war and peace decisions is a course that has kicked off and will not be reversed.”

“The government consolidated this orientation in the August 5 session, during which a firm decision was taken to task the Lebanese Army with devising a comprehensive plan for monopolizing arms before year end and to present it to Cabinet, a move that will take place next week,” Salam added.

“This course is a national Lebanese demand and necessity on which the Lebanese had agreed in the Taif Agreement before anything else, but its implementation was delayed for decades, which deprived Lebanon of several opportunities in the past,” the premier said.

He also reiterated Lebanon’s commitment to “the objectives of the paper presented by Ambassador Barrack after it was amended by Lebanese officials and approved in Cabinet in its Aug. 7 session.”

“This paper, which is based on the principle of the reciprocity of steps, stresses that Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory and the halt of all hostilities must be guaranteed,” Salam went on to say.