Boutros Harb - Later Political Career

Later Political Career

He was credited with helping negotiate the Taef Agreement, which brought the Lebanese civil war to an end by electing a power sharing agreement within the Lebanese Parliament. It is estimated that the Taef Accord, which gives Christians and Muslims equal representation in Parliament by assigning seats to sects, distorts power to the extent that only 40% of Lebanese are Christian, while Shiite Muslims are by themselves half the population.

He was a member of the opposition during the governments of Rafiq Hariri; in particular to Nassib Lahoud, Salim El-Hoss, Omar Karami, Mohammad Youssef Beydoun and Hussein Husseini. He announced his candidacy for the Lebanese Presidency during the 1998 elections but withdrew his nomination the day the polls began. Émile Lahoud was unanimously elected.

After a short period of support for the government of Salim El-Hoss in 1998, he rejoined the opposition. In 2000, he broke his alliance with Nayla Moawad and Omar Karami, and allied himself at the election booth with Soleiman Franjieh Jr, and the Tripoli Bloc of Mohammad Safadi and Najib Mikati.

In 2001, one of the founding members of the gathering of Kornet Chehwane strongly expresses his opposition to the policies of the Hariri government and to Syrian hegemony. In 2004, Harb participated, with Nayla Moawad, Omar Karami, Salim El-Hoss, Hussein Husseini and Albert Mansour, in the creation of a National Face for Reform. In 2004, he declared himself a nominee for the Presidency of Lebanon, however due to a Syrian-engineered constitutional amendment extending the term of President Émile Lahoud, he was unable to run. He then broke his alliance with Omar Karami who he considered to be too pro-Syrian.