UN General Assembly
1983

to dissuade the United Nations from exercising its peaceful role or friendly Powers from extending a sympathetic, helping hand. 297. In the face of this propaganda and through eight years of bloodshed, economic ruin and foreign intervention of every sort, it is proof of our inevitable viability as a nation that no Lebanese faction has ever entertained the idea of partition or secession. The Lebanese people are absolutely committed to a unified and independent Lebanon. What the Lebanese people share is a precious? experience in democratic government, unique in the Arab world. Until war broke out, Lebanon was the cultural and economic capital of the Middle East, the meeting place of Arab and Western intellectuals, the centre for international trade and a precocious example of successful, peaceful democratic government. 298. In 1975, as the society of civilized States looked on, this young democracy succumbed to a host of Arab- Israeli, inter-Arab and East-West tensions. To be sure, Lebanon, take other heterogeneous societies, had its share of internal tensions, but the virtue of democracy is that