Let me start by clarifying one point. The Christians, the Druze, and all the minorities in Syria are not in power. Those who are in power actually are only the Alawites, the confessional group of Bashar al-Assad. They are controlling all the others. I would like to remind all present today that since the accession to power of the Ba'ath regime, Christians in Syria have diminished from 34% to 12% today. This is the first point.
The second point is that you cannot say that this regime has protected Christians and is willing to protect them, for the only reason that if you see how this regime has acted in Lebanon, how it assassinated all the leaders of minorities, who were very influential in Lebanon—Kamal Jumblatt, the Druze; Bashir Gemayel, the elected Christian president; Rene Muawad, the elected Christian president; Rafik Hariri, the Sunni prime minister. You can see the aim of Syria was to diminish the role of these minorities and not to give them more than really effectively a minority role.
So we cannot think of...[Technical difficulties—Editor]...minorities. [Technical difficulties—Editor]...in Lebanon to be able to gather all this. I don't think Lebanon can play this role. We should start by having Lebanon be a peaceful country with no influence from external communities, from Syria or Iran or even Hezbollah. Then we can think about creating a peaceful state.
For Syria, don't think for one minute that when this regime folds, the minorities will be in danger. They think they are in danger because they haven't known anything else for 40 to 60 years. But when you give them the choice to live in freedom, you can be sure that all the minorities will have a new spirit, a new hope, living in Syria.