Beirut, March 15: Lebanon has rejected “for administrative reasons” Libya’s invitation to an Arab summit later this month, the foreign ministry said on Monday.
“The invitation was received by the Lebanese embassy in Damascus, which is not authorised to receive and respond to this invitation for administrative reasons,” the ministry said in a statement.
Last week a top government official said that President Michel Sleiman would not attend the March 27-28 summit in Libya because of a dispute with Tripoli over the 1978 disappearance of leading Shiite cleric Mussa Sadr.
Sleiman would not take part in the summit in Libya in response to a request made by parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Shiite who heads the Amal movement founded by Sadr, the official said on Friday.
Sadr — who is still regarded by Lebanon’s Shiite community as a key spiritual guide — vanished on August 31, 1978, and the circumstances of his disappearance are still a mystery. He was last seen in Libya.
In 2008 Lebanon issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi over the disappearance of the imam while he was in Tripoli with two companions, who also went missing with him.
Libya has denied involvement in Sadr’s disappearance, saying he left the country for Italy. But the Italian government has always denied he ever arrived there.
In 2004, however, Italian authorities returned a passport found in Italy belonging to the imam.
—Agencies