Former Lebanese President Charles Helou Dies At 88
BEIRUT (AFP) - Former Lebanese president Charles Helou died on Sunday of a heart attack, according to his doctor, Souheil Mattar.
The 88-year-old former president was living in Kaslik, a coastal area around 20 kilometers (13 miles) north of Beirut.
Helou served as Lebanon's president from 1964 and 1970. Under his rule, Beirut signed a 1969 deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization that gave Palestinian fighters free areas in southern Lebanon to launch attacks on Israel, leading ultimately to Israel's invasion a decade later and, indirectly, to Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.
A member of the ad-Destour party that led the fight for independence from France in 1943, Helou was Lebanon's first ambassador to the Vatican before entering politics in 1951 and taking several ministerial posts.
Elected in 1964 by supporters of his predecessor General Fouad Chehab, Helou eventually opposed the army's heavy role in the country and threw his weight behind the anti-Chehabist candidate Sulayman Franjiya, who was elected president in 1970.
Starting his career as a journalist, Helou was a man of letters and a lover of the French language, and was friends with former Senegalese president and poet Leopold Senghor, another eminent Francophone.
Deeply religious, Helou was nicknamed the Jesuit of Lebanese politics and was frequently caricatured as a priest. In retirement, Helou founded restaurants designed to provide hot meals to older Lebanese of modest means.
