Beirut
Only the Lebanese people and their representatives can decide the country’s future, said Iran’s foreign minister on a visit to Beirut on Friday. This followed the massive blast at the city’s port that killed 177 people and prompted the government to resign.
Iran backs Lebanon’s powerful armed movement Hezbollah, which along with its allies helped form the outgoing government.
Mohammed Javad Zarif was speaking after senior US and French officials met President Michel Aoun in a flurry of Western diplomacy that has focused on urging Lebanon to fight entrenched corruption and enact long-delayed reforms in order to unlock international financial aid to tackle an economic crisis.
“In our view it is not humane to exploit the pain and suffering of the people for political goals,” Iran’s Zarif told a joint televised news conference with Lebanon’s caretaker foreign minister. “We believe that the government and the people of Lebanon should decide on the future of Lebanon.”
Lebanese had been staging angry protests against a political elite blamed for the country’s many woes even before the Aug 4. blast, which injured 6,000 people, damaged swathes of the Mediterranean city and left 300,000 homeless. Some 30 people remain missing.
Aoun tweeted that he had held separate talks on Friday with both US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale and French Defense Minister Florence Parly.
“Empty promises”
Hale said on Thursday the United States’ FBI would join a probe into the blast at a hangar in the port where highly-explosive material detonated in a mushroom cloud. Hale called for an end to “dysfunctional governments and empty promises.”
International humanitarian aid has poured in but foreign states have linked any financial assistance to reform of the Lebanese state, which has defaulted on its huge sovereign debts. Zarif said Tehran and private Iranian companies were ready to help Lebanon with reconstruction and rehabilitating the country’s electricity sector.–AFP
