Lebanon’s new prime minister is a diplomat | World

The appointment of the 48-year-old Adib was announced in a statement broadcast on state television.

Adib has been Lebanon’s ambassador to Germany since 2013. He received the vote of 90 of the country’s 128 deputies. Both Shiites and Sunnis voted for Adib. In second place, with 16 votes, was the judge of the International Court of Justice, Nawaf Salam. There were 13 abstentions.

“There is no time for words and promises, now is the time to act,” he said in a speech at the presidential palace.

“We will be successful in choosing a homogeneous team of experts,” said the new prime minister.

He is linked to former Prime Minister Nayib Mikati. With the elections, Adib becomes the third leader of Lebanon in ten months.

The country has been without a prime minister since August 10, when Hassan Diab resigned. His government fell due to the mega explosion in the port of Beirut earlier this month and amid a wave of protests.

President Michel Aoun was informed in July of a deposit of large quantities of ammonium nitrate in the port of Beirut. The substance is said to be the cause of the mega explosion that destroyed part of the Lebanese capital and killed at least 171 people, according to official information.

Aoun said on Sunday (30) that “the time has come” to declare Lebanon a “secular state” during a speech marking the country’s centenary.

“I call for the proclamation of Lebanon as a secular state,” Aoun said in the speech, noting that the country needs to “change the system” after the huge explosion in the port of Beirut in early August and months of deep crisis. economical.

Aoun made this appeal making sure he was “convinced” that “only a secular state is capable of protecting pluralism, preserving it, transforming it into true unity.”

The Lebanese president made the remarks on the eve of the visit of his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, who had already declared in favor of far-reaching reforms in the Middle Eastern country, when he visited Beirut shortly after the deadly explosion in the port. from the city on August 4.

The leader of the Shiite Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, also said Sunday that he is willing to discuss a new “political pact” in Lebanon, where religious communities share power in a complex system.

Until now, Aoun had ignored the claims of the Lebanese protest movement, which emerged in October 2019.

But on Sunday night, he promised to “ask for a dialogue between the religious authorities and political leaders to find a formula acceptable to all,” which would probably imply a constitutional reform.

Macron on Friday criticized “the limits of a confessional system,” which led Lebanon to “a situation in which there is virtually no (political) regeneration and in which reforms are almost impossible to implement.”

After the devastating explosion in the port of Beirut, which killed at least 188 people, the international community has increased pressure on Lebanese leaders to push for ambitious reform in a country undergoing a deep political, economic and social crisis.

More than half of Lebanon’s population could have difficulty getting food due to the worsening economic crisis in the country and the destruction of much of the capital’s port infrastructure, the UN warned on Sunday.