Receiving the French Ambassador Plenipotentiary Pierre Duquesne in charge of the Lebanese file since the CEDRE conference in April 2018, Prime Minister Najib Mikati indicated that contacts are still underway to reactivate his government, noting that the coming period “requires the holding of intensive sessions of the Cabinet to take decisions on many files “, an allusion to the many files now on the table of the council of ministers including the purchase of drugs or the relaunch of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati, however, believed that summoning the government without resolving the current crisis could worsen the situation. He was referring to the boycott of the cabinet by the ministers of the Amal movement and of Hezbollah after Judge Tarek Bitar in charge of the investigation into the explosion in the port of Beirut issued an arrest warrant against him. former finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil, right-hand man of the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri.
In addition, Najib Mikati estimated that the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund “are going well”, while media sources, apart from the trip of an IMF delegation, no formal negotiation session has yet was held, the procedures being linked to the quantification of losses in the banking sector.
For his part, the French diplomat called on the Lebanese parties to agree on “general principles for dealing with the Lebanese crisis before reaching an agreement with the IMF”, a necessary precondition for the release of economic aid from the the international community in the face of the economic crisis and in particular the aid promised at the CEDRE conference.
