Oct. 4 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The United States ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea, stated this Tuesday, after a meeting with the vice-president of the Lebanese Parliament, Elias Bou Saab, that she hopes that an agreement will be reached “as soon as possible” for the demarcation of the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon.
In this sense, he has also underlined the “need to accelerate the Lebanese response” to the proposal presented by the US mediator Amos Hochstein, to resolve the dispute, according to the newspaper ‘L’Orient-Le Jour’.
Over the weekend, US envoy Amos Hochstein presented a final proposal aimed at addressing claims over gas fields in the Mediterranean in a bid to end the dispute between the two sides.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced on Sunday that the agreement is almost complete and agreed to study the US proposal, which provides for Lebanon to keep a large part of the disputed area and in exchange receive royalties from Total Energy, the company that has the Lebanese license to extract the gas.
For his part, Defense Minister Benny Gantz argued that the details of the negotiations cannot be made public, but assured that the final version will be presented to the Knesset or Israeli Parliament for approval “in an orderly and transparent manner.”
On the other side of the scale, the president of Lebanon, Michel Aoun, stressed that there will be no “association” with Israel in the exploitation of the gas fields, given the information about the ‘royalties’ of the Qana field through Total Energies.
The vice-president of the Lebanese Parliament assured on Monday, after a meeting between Aoun, the president of the Parliament, Nabih Berri, and the designated prime minister, Nayib Mikati, that they would demand amendments to the American proposal with a deadline on Tuesday. Beirut hopes to have an answer from Hochstein “before the end of the week.”
Israel and Lebanon — which are technically at war and do not maintain diplomatic relations — began a process of indirect talks in October 2020, mediated by the United States and held under the auspices of the United Nations at the headquarters of the international organization. in the Lebanese city of Naqura.
The negotiations revolve around an area of 860 square kilometers that, according to both countries, is located in their respective Exclusive Economic Zones, a matter of special importance after the discovery of gas reserves in this area that both Israel and Lebanon hope to be able to exploit. .
