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French envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian, who arrived in Beirut on Tuesday, is discussing with officials how to break the “vicious cycle” that has stymied presidential elections for more than a year and a half, a diplomatic source told AFP.
Le Drian began his two-day visit with a meeting with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and will also see him meet some of the country’s main political forces.
French diplomatic sources said Le Drian will work to push France out of the “vicious cycle” of political forces being unable to elect the president of the republic.
Without revealing his identity, he explained that Le Drian wanted to encourage “internal consultations between the parties in order to reach an agreement in preparation for the presidential elections.”
The international community’s efforts in Lebanon and those undertaken so far by Le Drian have reached a dead end, while the presidential vacancy since 2022 has exacerbated the unprecedented economic crisis that has been going on since the fall of 2019.
The five countries concerned about the Lebanese file – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, France, the United States and Qatar – called in a joint statement signed by their ambassadors to Lebanon on May 16 for “consultations of limited scope and duration among political blocs”, which they said were “necessary to end the current political deadlock”.
She explained that “the purpose of these consultations should be simply to identify a widely-accepted candidate, or a short list of presidential candidates,” provided that deputies would immediately after the consultations “hold open electoral meetings in parliament with a number of candidates until a new president is chosen.”
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