by naharnet.com — Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday called for organizing a U.N.-sponsored international conference on Lebanon. “The collapsed situation of Lebanon — which according to the constitution is a founding member of the Arab League and a founding member of the U.N. — requires that its cause be raised in an international conference sponsored by the U.N.,” al-Rahi said in his Sunday Mass sermon. He added that such a conference should seek to “prevent attacks on it and harm to its legitimacy and would put an end to the multiplicity of arms.”

It would also “address the absence of a clear constitutional authority for resolving disputes” and would spare the country “the paralysis of ruling authorities for several months at every juncture related to the election of a president or the formation of a government,” al-Rahi said. “We are fed up with wars, strife and the use of arms. We are fed up with assassinations, and over the past two days, our heart and the hearts of everyone were bloodied by the martyrdom of the activist Lokman Mohsen Slim, the son of the patriotic house and deep-rooted family,” the patriarch added. “His assassination is an assassination of the other, free opinion and a new motive to put an end to every illegal weapon gradually eradicating the fine figures of the country,” al-Rahi went on to say.