BEIRUT - Boutros Harb, Samir Frangieh, Carlos Eddeh, and Michel Mouawad…They are almost all unanimous about the fact that the ambassadors’ exchange between Syria and Lebanon is a “good thing”.

However, those MPs expressed their disappointment for not working more on the issue of Lebanese prisoners in Syria.

According to Boutros Harb, “this humanitarian issue cannot remain pending. The relegation of this case to a joint Lebanese-Syrian committee is not a solution by itself. This means that the parents of the vanished people would still suffer”.

Carlod Edde had the same opinion. “If we want to burry a case, we relegate it to joint committees; the Lebanese detainees in Syria are not vanished people; they were imprisoned for political reasons and the words of the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Walid Moallem, which explain that the Syrian prisoners in Lebanon are detainees of common law and that there are vanished Lebanese in Syria, are completely wrong”, said the leader of the national bloc.

As for MP Samir Frangieh, he thinks that the summit that has just gathered Michel Suleiman and Bashar el Assad in Damascus « cannot be considered as Historic, for it doesn’t start a new era between the two countries”.

“Unfortunately, Syria did not get out of its past complex. And this is obviously seen through the way it is dealing with the issue of the Lebanese prisoners in the Syrian slammers and the draw of the lines of the frontiers in the Shebaa Farms”, added Samir Frangieh.

Michel Moawad was delighted after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Damascus and Beirut. “This is the first time since fifteen years that Syria recognizes the Lebanese entity”, said the member of the General Secretariat in the March 14 forces.

However, he assured that “there is still a lot to be done to normalize the relations between the two countries”.