The President of the Parliament, Nabih Berri (right), receiving the five ambassadors of the quintet at Ain al-Tine on January 30, 2024. (Photo sent by our correspondent Hoda Chedid)
BEIRUT – BEIRUT – Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri deemed his meeting with five ambassadors in Beirut on Tuesday at Ain el-Tine as "useful and promising." The five countries — the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt — are all involved in the Lebanese presidential dossier.
Originally scheduled for Monday, Jan. 22, the meeting with Berri was postponed for "logistical" reasons, according to informed sources.
'The unified position'
The discussions focused on Lebanon's presidential deadlock, with no head of state since October 2022 and at least a dozen unsuccessful efforts to elect Michel Aoun's successor.
"The position is unified; the meeting was useful and promising," Berri said in a statement issued afterward with Lisa Johnson, Hervé Magro, Walid Boukhari, Saoud ben Abderrahmane al-Thani, and Alaa Moussa, respectively ambassadors in Beirut from the aforementioned five countries (in the same order).
The five ambassadors met last Thursday at Boukhari's home in Yarze. The meeting was an opportunity for the representatives of these states to underline their unity in the face of rumors of divergences within the group, but also to prepare the next meeting of the quintet (at the level of those responsible for the dossier), scheduled for the next two weeks. To this end, and according to information reported at the time by our columnist Mounir Rabih, each of those present expressed their country's priorities with a view to agreeing on a common roadmap.
At the time, French ambassador Magro insisted that the election of the next president could not wait for the end of the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in which Hezbollah is also involved. Consequently, in the eyes of Paris, the quintet should put pressure on the Lebanese protagonists to close this file as soon as possible.
France's emissary for Lebanon, Jean-Yves Le Drian, is due to visit Beirut shortly to convey this message to the local players and reaffirm the importance of electing a third-way figure, In the eyes of the quintet, the candidacies of Marada leader Sleiman Frangieh (supported by the Hezbollah camp) and former minister Jihad Azour (supported by the opposition and the Free Patriotic Movement) have been "definitively turned around," even though the March 8 tenors seem more attached than ever to their favorite.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.