Beirut Calls for Intl Help in Return of Syrian Refugees to Their Homes - Reports

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Lebanese President Michel Aoun called on international community to provide assistance to Beirut in encouraging Syrian refugees, living in Lebanon, to return to their homes as hostilities have been ceasing in Syria, local media reported.

"The vast majority of displaced Syrians have forcibly left their areas because of the fighting that was going on… And obviously, with the cessation of military confrontations, they can successively return to their homeland," Aoun said at a meeting with French officials in Beirut on Friday, as quoted by the Lebanese National News Agency (NNA).

Aoun recalled that those Syrian refugees who had already returned to their homeland had not reported any cases of abuse against them, the agency added.

The president also noted that Lebanon was waiting for the political solution to the Syrian crisis to be reached in order to allow refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) return to their homes.

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Lebanon, the population of which is just over six million people, has taken in around one million Syrian refugees in the course of the conflict in the neighboring country, according to various estimates. Beirut has been working with Moscow and Damascus in facilitating the return of Syrian refugees to their homeland.