2023-07-25 05:18:19
His travels are linked with a mission that remains the same. Jean-Yves Le Drian is expected from July 25 to 27 in Beirut, a month after his first three-day trip (June 21 to 24) in the costume of “personal representative” of Emmanuel Macron in Lebanon. In the meantime, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defense traveled through the region and countries that are friends of Lebanon, as part of his “mission of facilitation and good offices”intended to bring the country out of presidential nothingness.
Lebanon, which is sinking economically, is still without an executive since October 31 and the end of Michel Aoun’s mandate. In mid-June, a new attempt – the twelfth – by Parliament to elect a successor had stalled due to the showdown between Hezbollah and its opponents from the Christian parties, themselves divided. However, as the Quai d’Orsay and the allied chancelleries point out, this institutional step is a prerequisite before restarting the political institutions necessary for the economic recovery of the country.
This trip by Jean-Yves Le Drian comes a week after the meeting of the Group of Five in Doha, bringing together the countries financially and historically linked to Lebanon: Qatar, United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France. At the end of this July 18 meeting, the Five again urged the Lebanese Parliament to finally elect a president, and local political leaders to “take immediate steps to break the impasse”. They also reminded to be ready “to work alongside Lebanon to support the implementation of these reform measures (recommended by the IMF), which are essential to the prosperity, stability and security of this country. »
A new ambassador at the Résidence des Pins
Jean-Yves Le Drian, who qualified Lebanon in 2020 as “Titanic Without the Orchestra”, had previously traveled to Saudi Arabia, where he returned after the Qatari leg on July 18. All the difficulty lies in the ability or not to bring out a candidate likely to obtain the number of votes necessary to be elected to the Lebanese presidency. After having supported, unofficially and to the great displeasure of the Christian parties, the candidacy of Sleiman Frangié, also defended by the Shiite tandem Hezbollah-Amal, France is now posing as a facilitator to obtain a compromise.
In this mission, Emmanuel Macron’s special envoy sees the arrival of a new actor, Hervé Magro, until now respected French ambassador to Turkey, but a novice on the Lebanese scene, after the announced departure of ambassador Anne Grillo, in office since October 2020. “not to substitute” to Lebanese actors, but rather to “accompanying the recovery” Lebanese institutions. A precision that looks like a response to the words of the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement (CPL, Christian) and son-in-law of Michel Aoun, Gebran Bassil, who had declared in mid-July that he welcomed the efforts of Paris “in so far as they aim to help the Lebanese to get along, and not to impose a president on them”.
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