The Vice President of the Lebanese Government Mr. Issam Fares exhorted the Americans to look at Lebanon as a special and unique country concerning its democracy and culture. The United States should do their best to bring a just and global peace to the Middle-East and to free it from arms of mass destruction.

Mr. Fares intervention was delivered during a lunch in “Al Bustan” where he and his wife Hala honored the American ambassador Vincent Battle before the end of his mission in lebanon Were present at this occasion : ministers, deputies, ambassadors, political personalities, diplomats, academicians, economical personalities, journalists and trade unionists .


Mr. Issam Fares’ speech

I am pleased to welcome so many friends at a luncheon honoring a good friend, Vincent Battle. We honor him as he completes his duties as Ambassador of the United States to Lebanon. Soon, we will welcome him back as a private individual who has liked Lebanon enough to live with us for a while.

On the one hand, you are the Ambassador of the World's Superpower. In this capacity you delivered messages reflecting the strategic interests of your country in our region. We look at these interests differently. To the Superpower, these interests are policies, indeed foreign policies. To us, they are part of our life and of our reality. The higher interests of the United States and of the region are best served by conciliating the differences and by correcting the perspectives.

And just before you depart, let me emphasize a message we have often stressed in discussions with you:

1- Always look at Lebanon as a country on its own, unique in the region, unique in its democracy and its culture. And larger than its size and population.
2- Seek a just and comprehensive solution to the Middle East Problem. The greater the delay, the greater the disaster to you and to us.
3- Work to make the Near East, the home of the three Holy Religions, free of weapons of mass destruction. Try to avoid exceptions.
4- Assure the decision-makers in Washington that we, like them, believe deeply in the ideals that made America great, and that we wish that political acts should always match the deepest and the highest in these ideals.


On the other hand, you are the Ambassador of the country known to our people as America. America to us, to our emigrants who inhabit every nook and cranny of the 50 States, is a civilization, an open country, the land of opportunity. In this America, our emigrants in the hundreds of thousands live and thrive. Five of my grandchildren are American citizens, fifty two families from my village Beyno are American citizens, thousands from Akkar the region I represent are American citizens as are hundreds of thousands from all Lebanon. In all fields they have chosen, they have excelled. They excelled in literature, in science, in medicine, in construction, in business, and in politics. Gibran Khalil Gibran is a household name amongst American youth. His book, The Prophet is next in sale to the Holy Bible itself.

Through you, Mr. Ambassador, we send a message of thanks to America that opened its arms to the Lebanese. They chose America as their new country. They are proud to be Lebanese-Americans. And we are proud of their pride.

Mr. Ambassador, you represent a Superpower and you represent a Civilization. We cannot separate the two, and I believe we all agree that the Civilization should always influence and guide the Superpower.

I take this opportunity to congratulate you on a job well done. We will miss you as an Ambassador who understood Lebanon well, who loved Lebanon, and was loved in return.

And in the name of all of us here, I wish to extend our best wishes to you, as your embark on a new life and a new career.


Ambassador Vincent Battle’ speech

Issam Fares
All of those ministers who are on their way.
Members of parliament,
Colleagues from the diplomatic corps

Most importantly friends, let me if I might focus for just a minute on this very word. This last word friends. And indeed the notion of friendship which has been for me so significant during these 3 years in Beirut, the life of a diplomat with all of the attend glamour a all of the attend and adventure, is not always and indeed it is very often and not associated with the idea of friendships.

Diplomats come and go, diplomat represent policy, diplomat represent difficult issues. In Lebanon on a contrast, your society, you as individuals, you as institutions, you as groups are open, to foreigners & to diplomats in a way that truly is unique, real friendships, grow up, real understandings, flow from those friendships & for this I think I speak on behalf of virtually all of the diplomatic corps in sink that diplomatic service in Lebanon, truly is something special.

For all of the friendships represented by each & every one of you here I am truly grateful, and let’s face it this span of years that I have spent here in Lebanon have not been easy ones. Not in the region, indeed not in the world. By cheer irony & fate I landed in Beirut to take up my mission as ambassador on 9/11/2001, my plane touched down in Beirut at exactly the moment of this first attack in NY. This irony obviously changed our world and it certainly changed at a parochial Level my mission and the nature of my mission here in Lebanon in the days and the weeks immediately following that tragedy the outpouring of sympathy , support was immediate with overwhelming with deeply sincere and for me heartwarming

Thru all of the vicissitudes that has followed I have tried therefore to keep my eye on the ball. The ball of Lebanese – US relations. The demonstration of grief in 9/11/2001 points to the unique, the historic, the special, relationship that there is, between the US and Lebanon.

Our first diplomatic links with the Arab world were in morocco, but in fact America really came to learn about Arabs first and foremost with the influx of Lebanese to our country beginning in the late 19th century we call it up-close and personal, these emigrants contributed in virtually every fields and continue to contribute, later this week, I will go to Becharri to dedicated more other facts coming to the museum of Gebran Khalil Gebran, a relationship that he had with an American benefactor Mary Huskle, but Khalil Gebran as Issam Fares said was only one of so may Lebanese who have gone and excel from Paul Anka and Jean Abi Zeid that’s just the aze (from a to z) you go all the way thru the alphabetic down to disease and you find Jim Zoghbi so from A to Z we have Lebanese Americans who have excelled and contributed in every field end and ever, and it’s not only Lebanese in the Diaspora who have consolidated and strengthen the relationship , it is also in people like Issam Fares and his family the gracious hosts for us all today. From which strengths of that relationship comes thru extensive business ties thru support of American institutions such as Tufts university and you’ll be happy to know that my successor the ambassador coming is a graduate of tufts university which I know is dear to the heart of the deputy PM also thru a commitment to shared values to hard work as manifest in the detailed approach to the work of the council of ministers.

That is so important to Issam Fares, another value an assiduous attempting effort to insure no perception of non reality of conflict of interest between private interest and governmental interest value shared by our to societies.

We aim, excuse me, the movement as well was not only in one direction, Americans came to Lebanon in large numbers in the 19th century into the 20th century and in the deep down in the 21st century, they came as educators, they came as doctors, they came as people of the world and their trace is very evident in Lebanon low these many decades.

It is our hope at the embassy, and it is been a priority at the embassy to continue to enrich these people to people relationships. I had the pleasure and the privilege of speaking the LBCI just earlier this week about the extensive exchange programs that we have put in place and that we continue to nurture, to allow large numbers of Lebanese to travel to the US on academic exchanges and on a professional exchanges and to allow American both academics and professionals to com e to Lebanon.

I wish I could say that there were no contentious issues in our relationships in the relationship between our 2 countries.
At last I cannot say that there are and we have had over the 3 years that I have been here some very tough discussions some very hard hiding discussions on these differences and I might say that we have had some success in bridging the gaps between our 2 policies but thru it all, the sustaining strength of shared history and shared valued has helped keep the eye on the ball.

I leave Lebanon with satisfaction that those enduring links will continue to form the bedrock of Lebanese-US relations into the future, whatever the challenges that we confront.
Thank you for your friendship, thank you for the challenges of the past 3 years and good luck into the future.