Lebanon's newly-appointed Prime Minister Nawaf Salam vowed to try to rebuild the crisis-hit country, as he said he would prioritize focusing on the destruction caused by Israel's attacks and reviving the country's economy.
Salam spoke after meeting with Lebanon's new President Joseph Aoun, who himself took office last week. With the nomination of Salam and confirmation of Aoun, Lebanon, which has been run by a caretaker administration, now has a new government in waiting for the first time in two years.
After the meeting, Salam said he would not marginalize any side in Lebanon, an apparent reference to the Hezbollah group, which in past years opposed his appointment as prime minister and this year indicated its preference for another candidate.
Hezbollah has been weakened by its 14-month war with Israel, which ended in late November when a U.S.-brokered 60-day cease-fire went into effect. Israeli attacks killed 4,000 people and injured more than 16,000 and caused destruction totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.
Salam, who is currently the head of the International Court of Justice, said that he will work on spreading the state’s authority in all parts of the country. On Monday he won the support of a majority of legislators, after which Aoun formally asked him to form a new government.
"The time has come to say, enough. Now is the time to start a new chapter,” Salam said adding that people in Lebanon have suffered badly because of "the latest brutal Israeli aggression on Lebanon and because of the worst economic crisis and financial policies that made the Lebanese poor.”
Decades of corruption and political paralysis have left Lebanon’s banks barely functional, while electricity services are almost entirely in the hands of private diesel-run generator owners and fuel suppliers. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic further battered the economy, and the Beirut port explosion, one of the largest non-nuclear blasts ever recorded, badly damaged several neighborhoods in the heart of the capital.
Salam vowed to fully implement the U.N. Security Council resolution which states that Israel should withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah should not have an armed presence close to the border with Israel.
He added that he would work on spreading state authority in all parts of Lebanon through "its forces."
Salam said he would work on creating a program to build a modern economy that would help the country of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, out of its economic crisis that exploded into protests in October 2019.
Since the economic crisis began, successive governments have done little to implement reforms demanded by the international community that would lead to the release of billions of dollars of investments and loans by foreign donors.
"Both my hands are extended to all of you so that we all move forward in the mission of salvation, reforms and reconstruction,” Salam said.
Neither Salam nor Aoun, an army commander who was elected president last week, is considered part of the political class that ruled the country after the end of the 1975-90 civil war.
