Saudi Arabia Calls for Supporting Lebanese Army As Sole Legitimate Power

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by aawsat.com -- Saudi Arabia called for supporting the Lebanese Army based on a clear mechanism that ensures that it is the sole legitimate power in the country. In remarks before the Rome 2 Conference on Thursday, the head of the Saudi delegation, Deputy Minister of Defense Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Ayesh, said that the vision of Saudi Arabia “meets with the objectives of the conference that seeks to preserve the security and stability of Lebanon under Security Council Resolution 1701, which defines the army as the sole legitimate power in accordance with the Constitution and the provisions of the Taif Accord.” He emphasized the Saudi stance towards the need to develop a clear vision of a mechanism that supports the Lebanese army according to its needs. On the sidelines of the conference, which is hosted by Italy to rally support for the Lebanese Army and security institutions, Hariri held separate meetings with Ayesh, the personal representative of the Russian President for the Middle East, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

In his speech before the conference, the Lebanese premier said: “The Lebanese government recognizes that it is enjoying an exceptional moment of international consensus and support. We consider that it is in our national interest to preserve this international consensus and as such, we are committed to doing our part.” Hariri touched on the issue of the national defense strategy, which President Michel Aoun said he would address following the upcoming parliamentary elections. “The President of the Lebanese Republic, Michel Aoun, announced three days ago, that the National Defense Strategy will be discussed following the legislative elections in May. I join President Aoun’s call to the International community to support the Lebanese Armed Forces, to enable them to assume their duty of preserving security and stability in accordance with the National Defense Strategy,” he stated. The Lebanese premier emphasized that his government’s priority was to create a “virtuous cycle of security, stability, growth and employment for Lebanon and the Lebanese.” He noted in this regard that Rome 2 was a first step towards achieving this end, underlining his country’s commitment to the policy of dissociation, which was adopted by the government in December.

Marcel Ghanem announces departure from LBCI

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The Daily Star BEIRUT: Veteran TV host Marcel Ghanem will leave LBCI TV channel after more than two decades of hosting the late night political show Kalam Ennas. The news was confirmed Friday night in a joint statement issued by Ghanem and LBCI’s CEO Pierre Daher. The statement reported that Ghanem's departure from the station came after years of cooperation and between the two in the fight for freedom of expression. Ghanem is one of Lebanon's renowned journalists and talk show hosts. He has been hosting Kalam Ennas, currently airing every Thursday night, since 1995. The show deals with social, political and economic issues.

Lebanon central bank: IMF criticism valid, but budget a good start

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - IMF criticism of Lebanon’s public finances is valid, but the country’s draft 2018 budget sends a good signal as it seeks to cut one of the world’s highest debt-to-GDP ratios from above 150 percent, the head of its central bank said. Riad Salameh also said in an interview with Reuters on Friday that economic growth could be boosted by 1 percentage point for every $1 billion of donor funding that the government secures and spends. To help stimulate its battered economy, Lebanon is seeking up to $16 billion for infrastructure investment from investors and donors who hope to ward off more Middle East instability, in a country that hosts more than 1 million Syrian refugees. Growth and state revenues have been low for years, undermined by war in neighboring Syria and domestic political inertia. The central bank is due to publish its official 2018 growth outlook in July, and Salameh said a rate of between 2.5 and 3 percent was a “conservative” target. That excluded the potential impact of the $16 billion capital investment plan, for which fundraising will begin with an April 9 donor conference in Paris. “If we start seeing projects being executed ... we can estimate that for every $1 billion spent we can increase growth by 1 percent,” Salameh said. The International Monetary Fund, which expects 2017-2018 growth of around 1-1.5 percent, said last month that Lebanon’s debt trajectory was unsustainable and fiscal and structural reforms were urgently needed. Salameh described the IMF report as “realistic”.

UNDER PRESSURE

Lebanon’s parliament is under pressure to approve the budget before the Paris conference, which it is expected to do. The draft, with a deficit matching last year’s at 7.3 trillion Lebanese pounds ($4.8 billion), demonstrated a “serious effort” to address concerns and sent “a good signal to the markets,” Salameh said. The gap could be cut further with the help of structural reforms, but these were unlikely until after parliamentary elections on May 6. On Thursday Lebanon agreed its first two deals with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which focuses on private sector-led development. Salameh said the government’s embrace of the private sector was a positive turn and “a good sign for the creation of employment and decreasing corruption”. “We consider it a major reform in a trend where the size of the government in the economy has been increasing year on year.” With growth low, Lebanon relies on deposit inflows to local banks from its large diaspora to fund the government and maintain central bank defenses.

STEPPING BACK?

In the absence of effective political leadership, the central bank has for years quietly steered policy, using stimulus packages and what the IMF termed “unconventional” financial engineering to keep foreign reserves stable and growth ticking over. This year, with the likely passing of the budget, a growing political consensus on reform and a date set for the country’s first parliamentary elections since 2009, Salmeh said the central bank hoped to scale back its role. “We aim at reducing the size of our balance sheet by reducing our involvement in non-conventional activities as a central bank.” He said the central bank planned no new financial operations to raise reserves, which briefly fell in November during a political crisis when the prime minister offered his resignation in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia, straining the Lebanese pound’s peg to the dollar and causing some financial outflows. Salameh said Lebanon had “recovered and exceeded” what it lost then, with foreign assets excluding gold at more than $43 billion. “Confidence in the financial sector of Lebanon remains solid,” he said, noting that the draft budget contained a provision for the central bank to exchange Lebanese pounds for government-issued eurobonds. The November political crisis caused local currency interest rates to rise by around 2 percentage points. Salameh said he did not intend to change rates for the time being as there was equilibrium in the market, but that could change. There were challenges related to regional stability “and how to meet higher interest rates that are starting to happen worldwide and higher oil prices, as Lebanon is an importer of oil,” he said. Reporting by Lisa Barrington; editing by John Stonestreet Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Saudi Crown Prince Is Hiding His Mother, U.S. Officials Say

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Article represents opinion of the Publication NPR - 

by NPR-  Saudi Arabia's future king has hidden the whereabouts of his mother from his father and the public, according to U.S. officials. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has given his father, King Salman, a number of different explanations for her absence, say 14 current and former U.S. officials who spoke to NBC on condition of anonymity. Among the fabrications he is said to have created is that she is receiving medical treatment abroad. Years of intelligence have led U.S. officials to believe that the Saudi heir, who is now 32, is concealing his mother's location. The officials say that the crown prince was motivated by a belief that she opposed his ascendancy to the throne and that she would use her position as King Salman's third wife to prevent it. One source close to the royal family told NBC that the prince was concerned that his mother was trying to "empower her siblings." That allegedly caused a rift between the prince and his mother years ago.

Little information is publicly available about the mother-son relationship. Crown Prince Mohammed is her firstborn son, and according to Western diplomats who spoke to the New York Times in 2015, she "worked hard to promote him as his father's successor." "He is her eldest," a longtime associate told the publication. "For her, he is her glory at the end of the day." Officials first assessed that Princess Fahda bint Falah Al Hathleen, the crown prince's mother, was being hidden during the Obama administration. At a meeting at the White House in September 2015, King Salman reinforced that assessment when he told then-President Barack Obama that his wife was in New York receiving medical care. Obama did not notify him that the princess was not in New York, officials told NBC. They also said that in early 2016, the U.S. picked up communications in which the crown prince discussed his efforts to separate his mother from his father without the latter's knowledge.

The crown prince's mother wouldn't be the first Saudi royal whose movements were restricted since the prince swept into power in June 2017. He unseated his cousin, then-Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who was confined to his Jiddah palace with guards loyal to the crown prince, reported the Wall Street Journal. In November, ministers and princes were arrested and placed under house arrest at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh. The Saudi Embassy in Washington denied to NBC the claims that the princess is separated from her husband or under house arrest. Officials said their assessment is based on human sources, intercepts and information gleaned from countries that shared with the United States. NBC's report comes at a time when the conservative country has taken steps to offer women more rights. The kingdom is lifting a ban on women driving, and for the first time women are also able to join the military. The crown prince's Vision 2030 for the country includes a goal of bringing more women into the workforce, "from 22% to 30%." King Salman, now 82, has said that he misses his wife. But by secretly keeping her out of sight, his son is showing a willingness to remove what he perceives as obstacles to his role as future king, current and former officials tell NBC. President Trump will host the crown prince at the White House on March 20.

One person close to the royal family said Prince Mohammed and his mother had a falling out several years ago in part because he was concerned she was trying to empower her siblings. This person said MBS wanted to avoid a dynamic that played out with a previous Saudi king in which the brothers of one of his wives became extremely powerful and wealthy. Fatimah Baeshen, a spokesperson for Saudi Arabia's embassy in Washington, vehemently denied that the crown prince has kept his mother away from the king without the king's knowledge. "It is absolutely not true and if you would like to ask Her Royal Highness the Princess yourself, this includes asking her in-person, we would be happy to arrange it immediately," Baeshen said in a statement. NBC News, which first contacted Baeshen about this story on Dec. 22, 2017, did not accept the offer to speak with the princess because the Saudi government would not allow NBC to disclose that one of its reporters had met with her or use any information she provided for this story under any conditions, including if she was granted anonymity to talk about sensitive matters as others in this story were.

Lebanon elections pit old guard against new movement

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by al-monitor.com - Nour Samaha -- BEIRUT — It is officially election season in Lebanon, and the air is quickly filling up with the chatter of candidates, programs, videos, publicity stunts and alliances. Who can blame them? It has been almost a decade since Lebanon’s last parliamentary elections on June 7, 2009; the delay has been caused political disagreement over the creation of a new electoral law, security concerns, a partial political vacuum and two-year stalemate over the presidency, which led to the elections being postponed twice, allowing parliament to extend its own mandate twice. Now, nine years and a new electoral law later — a hybrid based on proportional representation where voters have to select a list of pre-decided candidates for their electoral district but get to select their preferred candidate within that list — Lebanon is gearing up for a political battle May 6. The elections are expected to pit the country’s old guard against a new, alternative political current.

Competing for the 128 parliamentary seats are 976 candidates (999 sought to run but 23 were rejected due to incomplete applications), including 111 female candidates, up from the 12 female candidates who participated in the 2009 elections. The candidates are a veritable who’s who of Lebanon’s political, media and civil society. In addition to entrenched veterans such as former Prime Minister Tammam Salam, Michel Murr, Marwan Hamadeh and Yassine Jaber, this year’s candidates include dozens of sons and daughters of former and current politicians, including first-timers such as Taymour Jumblatt (son of Walid Jumblatt), Tony Franjieh (grandson of Suleiman Franjieh) and Michelle Tueni (daughter of Gebran Tueni).

But in a country where the sitting prime minister, Saad Hariri, is the son of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and the foreign minister, Gibran Bassil, is the son-in-law of the president, Michel Aoun — essentially where dynasties control patronage networks in their communities — these particular candidates do little to raise eyebrows. Those who are raising eyebrows, however, are the new class of political activists preparing to face off with the political heavyweights. An array of activists has clubbed together to form a national coalition called Tahaluf Watani — which includes around 11 different movements, including Li Baladi, Baalbak Madinati and You Stink! — to compete for seats across the country’s 15 districts. They include some who shot to fame for their activism during the 2015 garbage crisis, such as Asaad Thebian, Marwan Maalouf and Imad Bazzi of the You Stink! movement. Others include local celebrity Paula Yacoubian, a political talk show host on the Hariri-owned Future TV who quit her job in television in order to run as a candidate for the "leaderless" political movement Sabaa. “We’ve decided to run because those who took to the streets in 2011 and 2015 need to have their voices heard in parliament,” Thebian, who is running in the 1st Beirut district, told Al-Monitor. “We need radical change in the system; we need to hold the government accountable, and we really need to have a functioning state and parliamentarians who know society.” Aware that establishment parties have much deeper pockets to spend on their electoral campaigns, the civil society activists are banking on their collective social media presence and on-the-ground interaction with voters to reach a much wider audience. “We are nonsectarian, nonpartisan, and we are unifying our voices and our power and offering solutions to issues,” Thebian said.

But for many, including those within the current political system, the elections are expected to be a continuum of the current establishment with little impact from the new alternative movement led by the activists. “They’re like the guy who pisses in the ocean and thinks it will rise,” Bassem Shabb, a current member of parliament within the Future Bloc, told Al-Monitor of the activist movements. “I don’t view them as a threat [in the elections]; rather, I view them as agents of positive change.” Shabb added, “While I don’t think they’re capable of huge change because the political system doesn’t allow for small groups of individuals to make a change, they can get the political parties to be more inclusive.” Currently, many of the parties are largely made up of traditional political families and a rigid power structure, making it difficult for new political activists to enter the system. And political parties have diversified their candidate lists for these elections, tapping into the trend and adopting local celebrities and civil society activists; the Christian right-wing Lebanese Forces has brought popular MTV news anchor Jessica Azar on board, while unionist and social welfare activist Nehme Mahfoud is now running as a candidate for Hariri’s Future Movement. According to Rabie Barakat, a Lebanese political commentator and former opinion editor of Assafir newspaper, the civil society movement is unlikely to see any tangible results in the elections. “They lack proper coordination; some are running from an apolitical perspective, which doesn’t work in parliamentary elections. They lack sufficient resources, and they are not part of the present clientelistic structure in Lebanon, meaning they are already lagging behind in terms of solid support base,” he told Al-Monitor. Lebanon’s political structure is dominated by a religion-driven patron-client relationship between political figures and their communities — a structure that has been in place for decades. Barakat added, “Also, most of the establishment parties are supported by regional players, which also increases their chances in the elections.”

With the new electoral law being practiced for the first time, from the redefined districts to the proportional representation system to the only one-preferred-candidate option, many within the electorate and the parties themselves will be viewing these elections as an experiment — whether forging new alliances in specific districts to ensure seats or running candidates based on their popularity and leverage among the electorate (as voters are only entitled to choose one name per list). But it is already apparent that the new electoral law is tipped in favor of the ruling parties. “While the introduction of proportional representation is a step forward in itself,” said Barakat, “the electoral districts are still more or less tailored to suit the political parties in the establishment.” Furthermore, the lists require enough candidates to fill 40% of the available seats for each particular district, forcing independent candidates to form alliances with others. While the same applies to political parties, they are currently seeking to form alliances among themselves, meaning little will change regarding the makeup of the political system.

EU supports Lebanese security sector with €50 million

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Today the European Union has announced a €50 million package to support the Lebanese security sector, as part of its longstanding commitment to the stability and security of Lebanon. This package includes €46.6 million for promoting the rule of law, enhancing security and countering terrorism until 2020 and €3.5 million in support of airport security. High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission Federica Mogherini made the announcement during today's Rome II Ministerial Meeting on support to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the Internal Security Forces (ISF) in Rome. She said: "Lebanon can count on the European Union's longstanding partnership in facing its current challenges, from humanitarian aid to development cooperation, but also on economy and security. With this new package, the EU reconfirms its support to the Lebanese security sector and the strengthening of Lebanon's institutions, which are crucial to ensure the stability, security and unity of the country, for the benefit of the Lebanese people and of the entire region". The new package is part of the EU's overall and longstanding support to the security sector in Lebanon where the EU has invested more than €85 million across the entire sector since 2006. EU activities have included support to the Lebanese security forces' capacity building, integrated border management, civilian oversight, as well as the mitigation of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear threats and mine action. In 2018, the focus is placed on integrated border management and countering terrorism.

Background

The €46.6 million commitment to support Lebanon in promoting the rule of law, enhancing security and countering terrorism until 2020, funded under the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI), aims at supporting the security and justice sector in Lebanon. The €3.5 million measure, adopted under the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP), specifically aims at securing Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport against illicit trafficking and the threat of terrorism. It will provide training for relevant agencies working at the airport under civilian authority, and allow for the improvements of existing security infrastructures. In November 2016, the European Union and Lebanon adopted Partnership Priorities for the period 2016-2020, which set up a renewed framework for political engagement and enhanced cooperation. The Partnership Priorities include security and countering terrorism, governance and the rule of law, fostering growth and job opportunities, and migration and mobility. They were agreed in the context of the revised European Neighbourhood Policy and the EU's Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy.

Bassil Asks UNRWA to Unregister Palestinians who Leave Lebanon

by Naharnet -- Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil on Thursday called on the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA to “unregister every Palestinian refugee who stays outside Lebanon or acquires the citizenship of another country.” “This would alleviate its financial burden and would contribute to lowering the numbers of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon without harming the right to return (to Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 and 1967), which is sacred,” Bassil told a Rome summit aimed at discussing UNRWA's future. The UN agency faces an unprecedented crisis after the U.S. froze tens of millions of dollars in funding. “We call on the international community to organize a campaign for the voluntary return of Palestinian refugees, seeing as all the prerequisites of a safe and dignified return are available,” Bassil added.

Lebanese authorities had in December announced that more than 174,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, in the first-ever census of its kind for a country where demographics have long been a sensitive subject. The census was carried out by the government's Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee in 12 Palestinian camps as well as 156 informal "gatherings" across the country. The result of 174,422 Palestinian refugees is much lower than previous estimates of up to 500,000. Palestinians began taking refuge in Lebanon with the creation of Israel in 1948, setting up camps that have since transformed into bustling, urban districts. But their presence has long been a controversial in Lebanon, with many blaming it for the eruption of the bitter war that ravaged the country between 1975 and 1990. Lebanon has not carried out a census of its own citizens since 1932, making the 2017 count even more remarkable. It sheds light on the living conditions of 174,422 Palestinian refugees, as well as another 18,601 Palestinians who fled the neighboring conflict in Syria to camps in Lebanon. Lebanon's Palestinian camps suffer serious problems, with varying degrees of poverty, overcrowding, unemployment, poor housing conditions and lack of infrastructure. Announcing the results, Prime Minister Saad Hariri said Lebanon had a "duty" towards Palestinians but insisted that Lebanon would, under no circumstances, accept their naturalization. Palestinian officials have also consistently rejected permanent resettlement in Lebanon because of their longstanding demand that those who fled or were forced out of their homes with the creation of Israel be granted the right of return. The census result is much lower than the 469,331 people registered in Lebanon with the U.N.'s Palestinian refugee agency. "UNRWA does not have a headcount of Palestinian refugees who are currently residing in Lebanon. What we have as an agency are official registration records for the number of registered Palestine refugees in Lebanon," spokeswoman Huda Samra told AFP at the time. "If someone registered with UNRWA in Lebanon decided to live outside Lebanon, they don't notify us," she said.