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Boutros Harb (بطرس حرب) (born in Tannourine, Lebanon in 1944), is a Lebanese politician.
A lawyer by profession, he first held political office when elected in 1972 as the Maronite deputy for Batroun, in the North Governorate of Lebanon, being appointed Public Transport Minister for Labour and Minister of the National Education and Art Schools in 1979 in Salim El-Hoss's government, and remaining minister until 1980. From 1990 to 1992, Harb returned to the Education Ministry in the cabinet of Prime Minister Omar Karame.[1]
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.
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.
In 2005 after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri,. Harb joined the massive protests and demonstrations against the Syrian occupation of Lebanon and demanded that Syrian troops withdraw immediately. Like many other, he accused the Syrian regime of ordering the death of Rafiq Hariri. As a member of the 14 March Alliance, he was one of the several candidates to run for the Lebanese Presidency in 2008 but all major parties decided to elect a compromise candidate, Michel Sleiman.
In 2007, Harb called for the integration of Hezbollah's military arm into the Lebanese Army.[2] He has been elected Labor Minister in 2010