Around 60 political and civil society figures gathered Wednesday at the Phoenicia Hotel in Beirut to chart a new course for addressing Lebanon’s political and economic crisis, according to a statement issued after the meeting, which launched an initiative called Beirut Call 25.

The meeting was attended by Change MPs Mark Daou, Waddah Sadek and Firas Hamdan, as well as former Democratic Renewal Movement vice president Antoine Haddad, Samir Kassir Foundation president Malek Mroweh and journalists Albert Kostanian and Diana Moukalled.

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Following opening remarks to the press by National Bloc Secretary Michel Helou — former executive director of L’Orient-Le Jour — and Moukalled, participants held closed-door discussions. According to an “appeal” read by Moukalled, the talks focused on ways to establish “a state that respects its Constitution, imposes its sovereignty over its entire territory, holds the monopoly on arms and ensures civil peace.”

The proposed steps included implementing the Nov. 27 cease-fire “in all its clauses,” which the appeal stated “involves the disarming of Hezbollah,” as well as urgently enacting political, economic, and financial reforms, strengthening political and judicial institutions, and “delivering justice to the victims of political assassinations and the Beirut port explosion” on Aug. 4, 2020.

The appeal also emphasized that these objectives cannot be met without the “rapid formation of a homogeneous and competent government.” The meeting coincided with Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam presenting a draft of his Cabinet to President Joseph Aoun and later stating that “some issues remained to be resolved.”

At the end of the gathering, Helou described the event as an effort to “promote a nonsectarian, sovereign, and reformist vision for politics in Lebanon, as well as to organize and unify the forces that share it.” He expressed hope that this would be the first in a series of similar meetings.