In May 2007 the Lebanese president Emile Lahoud decorated the outgoing Ambassador of Uruguay, Vos Alberto Rubio, with the National Order of the Cedar, in gratitude for to his diplomatic work. The ambassador later inaugurated a bust of José Artigas, the liberator of Uruguay, commemorating almost 49 years of uninterrupted diplomatic relations between the two countries.[12] Later in 2007 Jorge Luis Jure Arnoletti became the new Uruguayan Ambassador to Lebanon.[13]