New Government Under Pressure to Resign
“The country cannot be left without a government,” due to other pressing matters, and would continue to work to resolve the rift, Education Minister Abbas Halabi said after the meeting.
The row over critical comments made by Lebanese Information Minister George Kordahi about the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen had spurred calls by some top politicians for Kordahi’s resignation, while others opposed the move.
Saudi Arabia expelled Lebanon’s envoy and banned all Lebanese imports on Friday, and Bahrain and Kuwait followed suit, giving the top Lebanese diplomats 48 hours to exit.
Kordahi’s resignation would have knock-on effects that could threaten Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s coalition government.
But Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said Mikati’s contacts with officials from a number of states showed opposition to the resignation of the government, formed only last month after a 13-month stalemate.
“They told Mikati, ‘if you are thinking about resignation, take that out of your head,’” he said.
Richard Michaels, deputy head of the U.S. mission in Lebanon, had joined the crisis meeting in Beirut, a U.S. Embassy spokesperson said, declining to comment further.
Mikati had asked Kordahi on Friday to consider Lebanon’s “national interests” but stopped short of asking for his resignation.
Kordahi has been publicly backed by Hezbollah and has declined to apologize or resign over the comments, which have dealt the worst blow to Saudi-Lebanese relations since Saad al-Hariri’s 2017 detention in Riyadh.
Suleiman Frangieh of the Hezbollah-allied Marada Movement, told a news conference he had refused an offer by Kordahi to resign and would not name a successor to him should he do so.
Yet a group of former Western-backed Lebanese prime ministers called on Saturday for Kordahi to resign.
Fouad Seniora, Hariri and Tammam Sallam claimed in the statement that Kordahi’s remarks “harmed Lebanon’s supreme national interest”.
If Kordahi resigns, ministers backed by Hezbollah and its Amal ally could follow suit at a time when the government is already paralyzed by a dispute over an inquiry into the August 2020 explosion that devastated parts of Beirut.
The row comes as Lebanon struggles with a financial crisis dubbed by the World Bank as one of the worst in modern history.
Saudi Arabia had already in April banned all fruit and vegetable imports
from Lebanon, a ban now extended to all goods.
The Arab League said in a statement on Saturday it was concerned about the souring of relations and appealed to Persian Gulf countries “to reflect on the measures proposed to be taken … in order to avoid further negative effects on the collapsing Lebanese economy”.
Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf allies including the United Arab Emirates have led a military invasion of Yemen since 2015.
In an interview recorded over a month before he was sworn in as minister of information, Kordahi said that Yemen’s Ansarullah fighters and their allies in the army were “defending themselves” and described the years-long war in the country as “futile”.
Kordahi refused to apologize for his statements earlier this week, adding that he had “done no wrong”, as the show had been taped on 5 August, more than a month before he became a minister.
“I have never attacked nor insulted Saudi Arabia or the Emirates,” Kordahi said on Wednesday, adding that his words “did not implicate at all the government, of which I was not yet a member”.
In May, then-foreign minister Charbel Wehbe resigned after comments he made during a television debate - suggesting, among other comments, that Persian Gulf states had supported the rise of the Daesh terrorist group.
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