He had promised to send the Lebanese authorities a message of firmness. Jean-Yves Le Drian, who left Beirut on Friday, July 24 in the afternoon, after thirty-six hours in a country in full decline, kept his word. Whether with the President, Michel Aoun, the Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, the Head of Parliament, Nabih Berri, or the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nassif Hitti, the head of French diplomacy has not taken gloves.
He spoke in unusually direct terms, commensurate with the economic cataclysm ravaging the country. A tone that is also indicative of the annoyance that the procrastination of Lebanese leaders aroused in Paris, where we can no longer count the number of promised reforms that never saw the light of day.
” It was rough, Le Drian gave them a soap, relates a source familiar with the interview with the head of government, which several other ministers attended. He told them to take charge. It wasn’t an ultimatum, but it was not the time for niceties. ” To all his interlocutors, Mr. Le Drian insisted that France was not giving up on Lebanon and that it remained at its side, proof of this is the aid of 15 million euros allocated to French-speaking schools, pillar the education sector, particularly affected by the crisis.
“On the edge of the abyss”
But the minister added that the time for blank checks was over and that, in the absence of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), guaranteeing the implementation of the reforms, the 11 billion dollars (9, 4 billion euros) of aid promised at the Cedre conference, organized in Paris in 2018, would not be released. “Le Drian was very frank, very frontal. He told the truth as it is, which is important ”, adds a participant to another interview.
With Hassan Diab, the head of the Quai d’Orsay insisted on the urgent need for the establishment of a regulatory authority in the electricity sector, a well-known financial pit “Where what has been done is hardly encouraging”, he said in a public speech. To Nabih Berri, the leader of the Shiite Amal party, the French emissary stressed the importance of passing a law on capital control, a measure which the head of Parliament is no secret to oppose.
It remains to be seen if this shock treatment will have any effect. “Le Drian has told us again that Lebanon is on the brink of the abyss, testifies a representative of civil society, invited to a dinner, Thursday evening, in the company of the minister. But what do we do if Lebanon falls into it? No one has an answer to that. In September, it might be Venezuela, here. That leaves very little time. “
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