BEIRUT: In compliance with its disassociation policy, Lebanon will not attend the “Friends of Syria” conference due to be held in Tunisia this week, Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour said Tuesday.Mansour made the announcement after meeting with Prime Minister Najib Mikati to inform him of the invitation he had received from Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem to attend the conference scheduled for Friday.

“We have said that as a result of the dissociation [policy] and the reservations about several Arab League decisions taken during past meetings, we, in conformity with this position adopted at the Arab League, are unable to attend the conference to be held in Tunis on Feb. 24,” Mansour told reporters at the Grand Serail.

His statement came a day after Ahmad Hariri, secretary-general of the Future Movement, urged the government to attend the “Friends of Syria” conference, which is aimed mainly at calling for a political change in Lebanon’s neighbor.

The planned convention comes after Russia and China vetoed a Western- and Arab-backed resolution at the U.N. Security Council calling on President Bashar Assad to step down. Both Moscow and Beijing said Tuesday they would not take part in the meeting.

Since the outbreak of the popular uprising in Syria in March last year, the Lebanese government has adopted a policy to dissociate itself from the repercussions of the violence there and from U.N. and Arab League resolutions condemning the Syrian government over the brutal crackdown on protesters demanding Assad’s ouster.

The 12-month-old unrest in Syria has sharply split the Lebanese. The Future Movement led by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri and its March 14 allies staunchly support Syrian protesters demanding Assad’s removal, while the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance backs the incumbent regime.

President Michel Sleiman called on the Lebanese to maintain stability in the country in the face of the wave of popular upheavals sweeping Syria and other Arab states.

Speaking to visitors at the Baabda Palace, Sleiman expressed hope that “the Lebanese will maintain the current stability and draw lessons from what is happening around us in order to buttress our performance and our democratic practice,” according to a statement released by the president’s office.

Sleiman stressed that efforts in the next stage should be geared toward turning “the state from a personal welfare state of sectarian and provincial shares into a state providing public benefits for all the citizens and with the doors of the state’s institutions and departments open to all competent people so as to achieve balanced development according to needs.”

Meanwhile, Hariri’s parliamentary Future bloc strongly condemned the continuation of “massacres and crimes” committed by government troops against the Syrian people in the country’s cities, particularly the “criminal war against civilians in Homs whose buildings are destroyed and whose population is killed by heavy weapons.”

“This is happening at a time when the regime has expressed its desire to carry out reforms in a tragic, folkloric manner by putting a [new] constitution to a referendum at the expense of thousands of martyrs from the Syrian people,” the bloc said in a statement issued after its weekly meeting chaired by former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

The bloc called on the Lebanese government to provide relief aid to thousands of Syrian refugees who fled the violence in their state to Lebanese areas in the north and the Bekaa.

“The bloc also calls on the Lebanese to take the initiative to assist their disaster-stricken Syrian brothers by opening their houses and hearts to them, especially since they [Syrians] have previously stood on the side of the Lebanese people in many crises through which they have passed, the latest of which was the 2006 Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” the statement said.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt, a harsh critic of the Syrian regime, has also called on the Lebanese government to aid Syrian refugees in the country regardless of their growing numbers.

The U.N. High Commission for Refugees and the Higher Relief Committee in the north have put the number of registered Syrian refugees in north Lebanon at 6,552, though not all refugees are officially registered. In January, the two organizations said the number of Syrians crossing into Lebanon had increased by over 400 in just one week that month.

Since the uprising began in Syria, many Syrians have fled their country and now live in the Bekaa region, east Lebanon and northern towns.

Though the Syrian and Lebanese armies have taken measures to limit the number of Syrians entering Lebanon, many have come into the country via illegal border crossings.