Major bid to end Lebanon impasse

The first-ever peace endeavour started by the Gulf neighbours for Lebanon, which is under the throes of an economic meltdown, social unrest and remained fixed to establish a viable government committed to rooting out corruption while pulling out of the former prime minister.

Gulf Arab states are looking to mend a standoff with Lebanon, Kuwait’s foreign minister said during a recent visit, the first by a senior Gulf official since the spat erupted last year.

“This visit is one of the various international efforts to restore trust with Lebanon,” Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmed Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah said after talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati at the start of a two-day trip. “We are now taking steps towards building trust… which doesn’t happen overnight,” he told reporters, calling on Lebanese authorities to take “practical and concrete measures” that could bolster ties.

In another report, former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri announced he would not run in the upcoming parliamentary elections and was withdrawing from political life. The announcement could jeopardise the crisis-hit country’s ballot altogether and marks the end of an era that saw the Hariri family dominate Lebanese Sunni politics since the end of the civil war in 1990.

The 51-year-old three-time premier, who was propelled into politics by his father Rafic’s assassination in 2005, announced his decision during a press conference in the capital Beirut.

The Sunni Muslim leader said he was “suspending his work in political life” and urged fellow members of his Future party to also leave the political arena.

A tearful Hariri, who was first elected to parliament in 2005, declared he would not run in the legislative polls due in May. “I am convinced there is no room for any positive opportunity for Lebanon due to Iranian influence, international upheaval, national division, sectarianism, and the collapse of the state,” he said.

Kuwait Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmed Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah said a list “of ideas and suggestions was presented and mentioned again to the president later. “We are now waiting for a response from them on these suggestions,” he added, refusing to elaborate on the proposed steps.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib will visit Kuwait at the end of the month, Sheikh Ahmed said. Mikati was also invited to visit the oil-rich emirate, he added, without specifying a date.

In October, Saudi Arabia and its allies suspended diplomatic ties with Lebanon after the airing of comments by then information minister Georges Kordahi criticising a Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen.

Kuwait recalled its ambassador from Beirut and also asked Beirut’s charge d’affaires to leave the emirate.

Last month, Kordahi resigned in a bid to ease the standoff and French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris and Riyadh had agreed to fully engage to restore diplomatic ties.

But tensions have persisted, mainly over the powerful Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Beirut called on Lebanese political parties to “end Hezbollah’s terrorist hegemony over every aspect of the state”.

The proposal was delivered to Mikati and President Michel Aoun by Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmed Al-Sabah. The visit, coordinated with Gulf Arab states, is part of wider efforts to restore trust between Lebanon and its Gulf Arab neighbours as the country grapples with an unprecedented financial crisis.

Economic development

Lebanese officials began much-delayed talks with the International Monetary Fund on support measures aimed at lifting the country out of its worst-ever economic crisis. “We hope the negotiations will be concluded as soon as possible, but given the complexity of the issues it is possible that other rounds will be held,” Deputy Prime Minister Saade Chami, who heads the Lebanese delegation, said in a statement.

The talks are taking place online due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Lebanon is hoping to obtain a financial rescue package to rekindle an economy that has been in free fall for two years.

The previous government held several rounds of talks with the multilateral lender, but was unable to secure a bailout, amid a failure by the two sides to agree on the scale of financial losses stemming from the meltdown.

The current government opened a preparatory dialogue with the IMF last year and has settled on a figure of around $69 billion as its estimate for the financial sector’s losses, ahead of the talks that began on January 24.

The state defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2020, the currency has lost around 90 per cent of its value on the black market and four out of five Lebanese are now considered poor by the United Nations.

Food prices have skyrocketed and around 80 percent of the population now live below the poverty line, according to the United Nations.

Judges in France visit

A Lebanese judicial delegation will meet French authorities in Paris next week to discuss investigations into Lebanon’s central bank governor Riad Salameh, a judicial source said earlier.

Salameh is among the top Lebanese officials widely blamed for the country’s unprecedented financial crisis that the World Bank says is of a scale usually associated with wars. He is the target of a series of judicial investigations in Lebanon, Switzerland and France on suspicion of fraud, money laundering and illicit enrichment, among other allegations.

Salameh has repeatedly denied the accusations.

Next week, Jean Tannous, the Lebanese prosecutor leading a local probe into Salameh, and Raja Hamoush, another Lebanese judge, will meet with French authorities, the judicial source told AFP.

The visit “will focus on cooperation and exchange of information between the two sides regarding suspicions around Salameh and some of his close associates with regards to… money laundering, illicit enrichment,” among other crimes, the judicial source added, without specifying the exact date of the meeting.

France had opened a probe into Salameh’s personal wealth in May 2021 following a similar move by Switzerland.

Victims and survivors of the blast

Earlier, Lebanese group Hezbollah and its ally the Amal movement said they were ready to return to government meetings after three months of political deadlock that has exacerbated the country’s economic crisis.

“We announce our agreement to participate in cabinet meetings to approve the national budget and discuss the economic rescue plan and all that concerns improving the living conditions of the Lebanese,” the two Shiite movements said in a joint statement.

The two groups had been boycotting cabinet sessions in objection to the judge tasked with investigating the August 2020 port blast, Tarek Bitar, demanding he be replaced.

The explosion of a shipment of ammonium nitrate fertiliser stored haphazardly in a port warehouse for years killed at least 215 people and disfigured the capital.

Families of the victims and survivors of the blast have grown increasingly angry and have accused politicians of seeking to hamper the investigation to escape accountability.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun in late December called for an end to the government boycott, implicitly criticising his ally Hezbollah for blocking the cabinet meetings.

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