Lebanon supports Russia's initiative to return Syrian refugees to their homeland, Lebanese Ambassador to Moscow Chawki Bou Nassar said on Monday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th December, 2018) Lebanon supports Russia's initiative to return Syrian refugees to their homeland, Lebanese Ambassador to Moscow Chawki Bou Nassar said on Monday."I want to express Lebanon's support for the initiative that Russia has put forward in the issue of returning refugees to their homes, because Lebanon is the most interested country in addressing this issue. Lebanon is interested in these refugees returning from their territory once their safety is secured," the ambassador said at a meeting with Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Russian parliament's upper house's Foreign Affairs Committee.
Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011, with the government forces fighting against numerous opposition groups and terrorist organizations. As the Syrian government has regained control over most of the country's territories that had been seized by terrorists, it is now focused on creating favorable conditions for repatriating refugees.
Moscow has been assisting Damascus in the refugee repatriation through the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for the Reception, Allocation and Accommodation of Refugees. The center was created in late July as part of Moscow's efforts to aid Syria in transitioning to peace. Earlier in December, head of the Russian National Defense Control Center Mikhail Mizintsev said over 1.5 million Syrians, including those from abroad and internally displaced persons, had returned home since the start of the Russian operation in the conflict-torn country in September 2015.
According to the UN REfugee Agency (UNHCR), there are currently 5,654,768 refugees from Syria officially registered worldwide. Most of them are in Turkey (over 3.6 million), Lebanon (951,000), Jordan (673,000), Iraq (251,000) and Egypt (132,000). About a million Syrian children were born outside their homeland.
