By Lisa Barrington and Maya Gebeily
DUBAI (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates in the coming days will lift a temporary restriction on issuing visas to Lebanese nationals due to security concerns, a UAE official told Reuters on Thursday.
“Temporary restrictions are in place in response to security concerns. Temporary restrictions continuously undergo review and are subject to be lifted for specific categories of visas in the coming days,” the UAE official said, without giving further details.
Lebanese citizens have been reporting in recent weeks that visas for Lebanese outside the UAE were not being granted.
Two travel agents in Lebanon told Reuters they were unable to request visas for Lebanese nationals to the UAE through the usual online system, but said they had not received any new instructions or changes to entry requirements.
One of the agents said that in previous cases when the UAE had suspended visas, the decision was reflected in a technical ban on requesting visas with no formal instructions, as is happening now.
A helpline for Dubai’s General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs on Thursday said Lebanese outside of the UAE would temporarily not be granted visas on the instruction of the Interior Ministry.
The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not comment.
(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Maya Gebeily; Editing by Leslie Adler)
