(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Lebanese Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas said Monday that a Turkey-proposed "safe zone" in northern Syria would rekindle hopes among Syrian refugees in Lebanon of returning to their homes.
In a joint press conference held in Beirut with Ross Mountain, the UN's envoy to Lebanon, Derbas called for the Syrian conflict to be resolved "in a humanitarian and realistic way" rather than with a policy of "ignoring and denying" the facts.
According to the UN, there are some 1.2 million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon and around 400,000 other unregistered Syrian refugees, who together account for roughly one third of Lebanon's current population of some 4 million.
Derbas said the proposed safe zone would help "ease the pressure on Lebanon and help Syrian refugees return to their homes."
On Saturday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the elimination of the Daesh militant group would automatically lead to formation of "safe zones" in Syria and Iraq in which Syrian refugees currently in Turkey and in neighboring countries € along with those displaced within Syria and Iraq € could return.
According to the UN, more than 220,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in early 2011 between the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and armed opposition groups.
Roughly half of the country's population has been displaced by the violence, UN figures suggest, with nearly four million Syrians now seeking refuge in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.
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