Aoun: Hezbollah is cooperative on the weapons issue

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s cabinet on Thursday named asset manager Karim Souaid as central bank governor, official media reported, a post crucial to implementing economic reforms demanded by the international community.
He was appointed despite reservations of new reformist prime minister Nawaf Salam, who called on Souaid to commit to the government’s reform agenda in a country enduring a five-year economic collapse widely blamed on official mismanagement and corruption.
“The cabinet appointed Karim Souaid as central bank governor,” the official National News Agency said.
Born in 1964, Souaid officially takes over after embattled former chief Riad Salameh’s term expired in July 2023 with no designated successor.
Divided politicians had since failed to agree on a permanent replacement for Salameh, who has been accused at home and abroad of financial crimes.
First vice-governor Wassim Manssouri had been acting head of the central bank, a post that is traditionally reserved for a Maronite Christian in Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system of governorship.
Souaid is the founder and managing partner at Gulf-based Growthgate, according to his biography on the private investment firm’s website.
It says he previously worked at financial establishments including HSBC Bank and has been involved in privatization initiatives in a number of Arab countries.
Some local media have reported that Souaid is close to the banking sector and members of Lebanon’s entrenched ruling class.
Salam said he had “reservations” about Souaid’s appointment but did not give specifics except to cite his “desire to protect depositors’ rights and preserve the state’s assets.”
He said Souaid “must adhere, from today, to the financial policy of our reformist government... on negotiating a new program with the International Monetary Fund, restructuring the banks, and presenting a comprehensive plan” to preserve depositors’ rights.
Lebanon’s new authorities need to carry out reforms demanded by the international community to unlock bailout funds.
The economic crash since 2019 has seen the local currency lose most of its value against the dollar and pushed much of the population into poverty, with people locked out of their savings.
Salam also said the cabinet approved Thursday “a draft law aiming to modify legislation on banking secrecy.”
In April 2022, Lebanon and the IMF reached conditional agreement on a $3-billion-dollar loan package, but painful reforms that the 46-month financing program would require have not been undertaken.
Earlier this month, the IMF welcomed the new Lebanese government’s request for support in addressing the country’s severe economic challenges.
In February, it said it was open to a new loan agreement with the country following discussions with its recently appointed finance minister.
Beirut-based think tank the Policy Initiative in a statement Wednesday said that the nomination of central bank chief would “test the new government’s commitment to genuine reform.”
“The next governor will shape Lebanon’s urgent reform agenda, serve as the main counterpart to the International Monetary Fund, and directly engage in sovereign debt restructuring negotiations” alongside the finance ministry, it said.
Souaid studied law at Lebanon’s St. Joseph University and at Harvard Law School in the United States, according to his biography.
He has also worked as a corporate finance attorney in New York, and is a member of the New York State Bar Association, it says.
The central bank governor in Lebanon is named by cabinet decree for a six-year mandate that can be renewed multiple times, based on the finance minister’s recommendation.

BEIRUT: Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has accused Israel of exploiting followers of his minority faith in Syria as part of a broader plan to divide the Middle East along sectarian lines.
Israel wants “to implement the plan it has always had... which is to break up the region into confessional entities and extend the chaos,” said Jumblatt, a key figure in Lebanese politics for more than four decades.
“They want to annihilate Gaza, then it will be the West Bank’s turn... they are trying to destabilize Syria, through the Druze but also others,” he told AFP in an interview Wednesday.
“It’s a dangerous game.”
Israel has been making overtures toward Syria’s Druze community since Islamist-led rebels ousted longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December after more than 13 years of war.
Since then, Israel has sent troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone along the armistice line on the Golan Heights, and war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported regular Israeli incursions deeper into southern Syria.
The Druze faith has followers in Israel, Lebanon and Syria, including the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
They account for about three percent of Syria’s population and are concentrated in the southern province of Sweida.
This month, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said 10,000 humanitarian aid packages had been sent to “the Druze community in battle areas of Syria” over the past few weeks.
“Israel has a bold alliance with our Druze brothers and sisters,” he told journalists.

Israel also authorized the first pilgrimage in decades by Syrian Druze clerics to a revered shrine in Israel.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel would not allow Syria’s new rulers “to harm the Druze,” following a deadly clash between government-linked forces and Druze fighters in the suburbs of Damascus.
Druze leaders rejected Katz’s warning and declared their loyalty to a united Syria.
Druze representatives have been negotiating with Syria’s new authorities on an agreement that would see their armed groups integrated into the new national army.
The talks had almost reached completion but “Israeli pressure” on some parties prevented the accord from being finalized, a source close to the negotiations told AFP, requesting anonymity as the matter is sensitive.
Jumblatt noted that during the French mandate in the 1920s and 1930s, “Syria was divided into four entities: an Alawite state, a Druze state, the state of Damascus and the state of Aleppo,” the latter two being Sunni Muslim.
“The Druze, with the other Syrian nationalists, were able to prevent the division of Syria” by launching a revolt and the plan later collapsed, he said.
He expressed hope that any new division of Syria could be avoided, appealing to Arab leaders to support interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa.

Jumblatt in December was the first Lebanese official to meet Sharaa after his Islamist group spearheaded the offensive that ousted Assad.
Sharaa told Jumblatt that Syria would no longer exert “negative interference” in Lebanon, after Assad’s dynasty was accused of destabilising Lebanon for years and assassinating numerous Lebanese officials, including Jumblatt’s father.
Kamal Jumblatt, who founded the Progressive Socialist Party and opposed Assad’s father Hafez over his troops’ intervention in the Lebanese civil war, was killed near the Syrian border in 1977.
This month, Syrian security forces arrested former intelligence officer Ibrahim Huweija, suspected of numerous killings including that of Jumblatt’s father.
“He’s a big criminal, he also committed crimes against the Syrian people and should be tried in Syria,” Jumblatt said.
Lebanon’s new authorities have been under pressure since a devastating war between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, an Assad ally, Jumblatt said.
“The Americans want Lebanon to normalize ties with Israel,” he said.
Under a November ceasefire, Hezbollah was to withdraw fighters from the border area and dismantle its military infrastructure there.
The Israeli army was also to withdraw but troops are still deployed in five positions inside Lebanon that it deems strategic.