French President Emmanuel Macron admonished Lebanon’s leaders on Sunday for serving their own interests ahead of their country and vowed to push ahead with efforts to prevent chaos, but appeared to have no back up plan should his initiative fail.
Lebanon’s prime minister-designate, Mustapha Adib, quit on Saturday after failing to line up a non-partisan cabinet, dealing a blow to a French plan aimed at rallying sectarian leaders to tackle the country’s crisis.
“I am ashamed of Lebanon’s political leaders,” Macron told a news conference in Paris. “The leaders did not want, clearly and resolutely, to respect the commitments made to France and the international community. They decided to betray this commitment.”
For the first time, Macron also specifically questioned the role of the heavily armed Hezbollah and the influence of Iran, saying that the group needed to lift its ambiguity on the political arena.
Adib was picked on August 31 to form a cabinet after Macron’s intervention secured a consensus on naming him in a country where power is shared out between Muslims and Christians.
Under the French roadmap, the new government would take steps to tackle corruption and implement reforms needed to trigger billions of dollars of international aid to fix an economy crushed by a huge debt.
But there was deadlock over a demand by Lebanon’s two main Shi’ite groups, Amal and Hezbollah, that they name several ministers, including for finance, who will have a big role in drawing up economic rescue plans.
Macron, who also took a swipe at leading Sunni Muslim politician Saad al-Hariri, criticised both parties for blocking efforts to form a government by a mid-September deadline.
