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Nicolas Nassif wrote in “Al-Akhbar”:
President Nabih Berri puts US sanctions against the debut. It has nothing to do with the new government. He corrected how much he touched the former minister who was punished. It does not have conditions for its composition, but it has already marked a parallel equation: without the money portfolio for the Shiites, they formed a government without them.
If it is necessary to link the recent US sanctions with what French President Emmanuel Macron said at the end of his second visit to Beirut on September 1, about his study and his American and European allies imposing sanctions on obstructive Lebanese parties, then there is a possible explanation for this link: the retribution of the two former ministers to Ali. Hassan Khalil and Youssef Fenianos are nothing more than an American accompaniment to the French initiative with an additional dose, and it is that the sanctions at this specific moment – before the spoilers that Macron spoke of – are nothing more than a step preventive not to raise the head.
The speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, has a contradictory point of view, which callers have heard from him. The implication is that these sanctions are aimed at curbing the French dynamics to form the government and lift Lebanon out of its ordeal, and the information available to it from important sources indicates that the French have nothing to do with that.
What those who called Berri heard is that he is directly concerned about the message of sanctions, especially since the punished is the next number one in the Amal movement in terms of the position he occupies close to him as the main assistant. In addition, the Council Speaker distinguishes between the work to which the sanctions message is directed and the formation of a government that does not deviate – whatever the weight of external interference – from norms and customs that no one can ignore or skip: We are with a government of 100 percent specialists, with a minimum of political flavor. Simple though. We do not want them partisans, not even close to partisans. But we definitely don’t want them to fall on us when they are the ones who live abroad and don’t know what the country is. I give the name. If you were rejected, I would like a compelling explanation for your rejection, so I’d give it another name, God willing.
What Berri does not hide is his fear of pressuring the designated president to lead him to apologize for not forming a government.
In the ambiguous timing that sparked more than one speculation, the US sanctions came in the middle of the 15-day window Macron gave President-designate Mustafa Adib to form the government. Some saw it as an interceptor tree to stop the momentum of the French initiative, while others saw it at the core of the initiative’s program, after Macron in Beirut linked sanctions and corruption. This is not the American approach to the concept of sanctions focused on besieging Hezbollah and depleting its sources of funding as its sole and primary objective. To this end, Washington previously issued sanctions against party officials, lawmakers, and security leaders, as an integral part of what it viewed as the fight against terrorism, money laundering, and their use in attacks.
What happened recently with Khalil and Fenianos was that they were punished as corruption for their relationship with Hezbollah. Extensive information from US sources that was reached referred to official Lebanese references, which reported facts that the Americans considered “irrefutable in corruption”, although they insisted on this phrase, of the participation of the two men. Thus, the American and French positions intersect when the new baton is used in a political context that goes beyond security concerns, often expressed by terrorism, to penetrate the Lebanese political system.
However, the strangeness that accompanies the composition has not been previously seen in similar cases. It puts the designated president in your hands alone: just one meeting a week with President Michel Aoun. He does not meet with the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, except for the meeting that was announced before the sanctions with Khalil and Hussein al-Khalil. There is no contact with Representative Gebran Bassil or anyone else. There is no government draft yet, no serious names to be distracted by, even on the usual basis when it flows into the first days of commissioning.
The great catastrophe in the arcane game, that the ministerial declaration of an unborn government, revealed before appointing the appointed president, is the French working document. Subsequently, Adeeb’s name was mentioned as President-designate, before the deputies elected him and appointed him President of the Republic. The French knew him closely for several reasons: His wife is French, who also has French citizenship. In addition, the father-in-law of the Macron health service official is “advanced.” He was not the only name proposed to head the government, but now he has grown stronger than any president-designate who preceded him: He does not need anyone, he does not appease anyone, and he does not submit to anyone’s conditions. Are you not forced to put all your cards on the table, clinging to the most expensive maneuver, which is that no one knows what papers you have in your hands? Do you really own it, or at best, did you achieve it? Is he really a prime minister whose ministerial names are expected to fall the same way the French card fell after Macron’s first visit to Beirut, and shortly after the resignation of Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government on August 10? , and in the same way that the name of the designated president fell? At the time, what was rumored that Prime Minister Saad Hariri was the so-called Prime Minister-designate seemed extremely naive. The former head of government became a mailbox between Paris and Beirut, passing through the Casa del Centro, the day his colleagues, former presidents, met.
The sad paradox is that what Hariri demanded to head the government, twice in a row after his resignation in October 2019 and before the president’s designee was finally appointed, and it was not fully delivered to Diab, Adeeb gets it. without waiting, and within the binding deadline for all Lebanese parties while the sword of sanctions is in place. Their necks.
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