Patrick Durel, who arrived in Beirut on Wednesday, held talks with President Michel Aoun
...president of Leb, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hizbullah...
and other key players, including parliament speaker Nabih
KnobbyBerri
...Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, head of the Amal Shiite party aligned with Hezbollah, a not very subtle sock puppet of the Medes and Persians...
A statement from the presidency quoted Aoun as saying that he "adheres to the French initiative, which is in the interest of the country."
Yet Leb
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...’s ruling class has ignored the deadlines set by La Belle France, which has spearheaded efforts to stop the country’s collapse since a crushing currency crisis and a cataclysmic explosion at Beirut port.
On September 1, Macron gave politicians two weeks to form a non-sectarian government of experts tasked with carrying out urgent reforms capable of unlocking billions in aid.
On September 27, Macron gave another deadline of "four to six weeks" which also went unheeded.
French officials have voiced their exasperation with Lebanese politicians’ unwillingness to put the interest of the country before their own.
After Lebanon’s ambassador to Germany was designated to form a government and failed, Aoun last month asked Saad Hariri
...Second son of Rafik Hariri, the Leb PM who was assassinated in 2005. He has was prime minister in his own right from 2009 through early 2011. He was born in Riyadh to an Iraqi mother and graduated from Georgetown University. He managed his father's business interests in Riyadh until his father's assassination. When his father died he inherited a fortune of some $4.1 billion, which won't do him much good if Hizbullah has him bumped off, too....
to return and attempt to forge a consensus on a cabinet line-up.
Hariri, who has held the position twice, was forced to resign last year, under pressure from an unprecedented popular protest movement.
Hariri, Aoun, Berri and others embody the sectarian-driven, corrupt and hereditary brand of politics that protesters, and ostensibly La Belle France, say needs to be done away with.
Lebanon, which defaulted on its debt this year, is experiencing its worst ever economic crisis and is still reeling from a devastating explosion at the port that gutted entire neighborhoods of Beirut on August 4.
Both are widely blamed on government corruption and incompetence.