Iran, UN diplomats stress Syria political solution

The Iranian ambassador to Beirut and the UN special coordinator for Lebanon have stressed a political solution to the ongoing crisis in Syria.
During a meeting on Thursday, Iran’s Ghazanfar Roknabadi and the UN’s Derek Plumbly also underscored the need for addressing the issues related to Syrian refugees.
Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since March 2011. Damascus says the West and its regional allies have been fuelling the unrest by providing militants with money and weapons.
According to some reports, over 140,000 people have been killed and millions of others have been displaced due to the turmoil in Syria.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Thursday that the number of the refugees who fled Syria and registered in Lebanon has surpassed one million.
Last month, the UN said that Syrian refugees fleeing the conflict in the Arab country are about to replace Afghans as the biggest refugee population in the world.
The Iranian diplomat and the UN official also touched on the developments in Lebanon.
Plumbly expressed satisfaction with the political trend in Lebanon and lauded Beirut’s fight against terrorist networks.
He also expressed hope that peace would be restored in Lebanon so that the groundwork would be laid for the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in the Arab country.
The Lebanese army has been conducting operations to crush the deadly violence in the northern city of Tripoli, which has been suffering from a spillover of the foreign-backed militancy in neighboring Syria.
Lebanon has also been suffering from terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda-linked militants as well as random rocket attacks related to the Syrian conflict.
The foreign-backed militants in Syria have frequently attacked Lebanese border areas, where the majority of the residents support the Syrian government.