890E.00/303
Statement Issued to the Press by the Department of State, November 26, 1943
The Government of the United States has noted with approval the action of the French Committee of National Liberation in releasing and restoring to office the President and Ministers of the Lebanese Republic and in abrogating the decrees issued on November 11, 1943, suspending the Lebanese Constitution, dissolving the Lebanese Parliament and naming a “Chief of State, Chief of Government.”
The situation in Lebanon is thus restored to a normal basis, and it is the earnest hope of this Government that friendly negotiations can now proceed in an atmosphere of good will on both sides for the solution of the underlying issue of the independence of the Levant States.
By way of background, it may be recalled that the independence of Syria and Lebanon was contemplated in the terms of the Class A Mandate over these States entrusted to France by the League of Nations. American rights in these States were defined in the Treaty of 1924 between the United States and France.57 The Government of the United States has subsequently expressed its sympathy and that of the American people with the aspirations of the Syrian and Lebanese peoples for the full enjoyment of sovereign independence. The proclamations of independence issued in the name of the French National Committee in 1941 were welcomed as steps toward the realization of these aspirations, and this Government extended limited [Page 1050] recognition to the local Governments established thereunder by accrediting to them a Diplomatic Agent. More recently, this Government observed with satisfaction the successful establishment of elected Governments in these States. Moreover, the Eastern Mediterranean is a theater of war. While it is an area of primary British strategic responsibility, any activities therein which hamper the general war effort are of concern to all the United Nations.
- Signed at Paris, April 4, 1924, Foreign Relations, 1924, vol. i, p. 741.↩