Prominent diplomat, UN court head Nawaf Salam appointed Lebanon’s new Prime Minister
Move angers Hezbollah and its allies; Salam serving as International Court of Justice head
Beirut: Lebanon’s new President has asked prominent diplomat and jurist Nawaf Salam to form the country’s new government after Salam was named Prime Minister by a large number of legislators on Monday.
The move apparently angered the Hezbollah group and its allies. Salam is currently serving as the head of the International Court of Justice and his nomination was made by Western-backed groups as well as independents in the Lebanese parliament.
Salam has the support of Saudi Arabia and Western countries as well. Hezbollah legislators abstained from naming any candidate for the Prime Minister’s post.
Salam’s nomination is seen by many as a glimpse of hope after the 14-month Israel-Hezbollah war that left 4,000 people dead and more than 16,000 wounded and caused destruction totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. The war stopped in late November when a US-brokered 60-day truce went into effect.
Shortly after Salam won majority backing from legislators, some people celebrated in the streets of Beirut with fireworks amid hopes that his nomination and last week’s election of army commander Gen Joseph Aoun as president would help release billions of dollars of investments and loans by foreign donors.
Salam will have a difficult mission ahead of him following the truce with Israel that caused widespread destruction in the Mediterranean nation and weakened the Iran-backed Hezbollah. He will also have to work on getting the small nation out of its historic five-year economic meltdown.
In the past years, Hezbollah has repeatedly blocked Salam from becoming Prime Minister, casting him as a US-backed candidate. “We will see their acts when it comes to forcing the occupiers to leave our country, bringing back prisoners, reconstruction” and the implementation of the UN Security Council resolution that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Raad, said after meeting with Aoun.
Raad added that Hezbollah extended its hand last week by electing Aoun and they were hoping to meet an extended hand from the other side, “but this hand was cut off.”
Last week’s election of Aoun as President and Monday’s nomination of Salam is likely to lead to a flow of funds from Western and oil-rich Arab nations to Lebanon to help in the reconstruction process. Tens of thousands of Lebanese have lost their savings since the country’s banking sector crashed as a result of the economic crisis.
Neither Aoun nor Salam are considered part of the country’s political class that is blamed for widespread corruption and mismanagement over the past decades that exploded in October 2019 into one of the world’s worst economic meltdowns in more than a century.
Lebanon has been run by a caretaker government for more than two years and Aoun was elected after a 26-month vacuum in the President’s post. After a day of consultations between Aoun and legislators, Salam got the backing of 84 deputies, while outgoing Prime Minister Najib Mikati received nine votes.
Thirty-four legislators from the 128-member legislature abstained. Shortly after the results came out, Mikati called Salam to congratulate him and wish him luck with the new job.
Antoine Shoukeir, the presidency’s Director General, said after the consultations that Salam now is Prime Minister-designate, adding that he is currently outside Lebanon and should be back in the coming hours.
A meeting was scheduled for Tuesday at the presidential palace in Beirut’s southeastern suburb of Baabda between Aoun, Salam and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri after which he will start the process of forming a new Cabinet.
It was not immediately clear whether Salam plans to resign as head of the ICJ. “My voice is for Nawaf Salam because my voice is for Lebanon and no one else,” independent legislator Paula Yacoubian told journalists after meeting with Aoun.
Salam (71) is a member of a prominent Sunni Muslim family from Beirut and his late paternal uncle, Saeb Salam, was one of the Lebanese leaders who fought for the country’s independence from France and later served several terms as Lebanon’s Prime Minister. Salam’s cousin, Tammam, also served as Prime Minister for two years starting in 2014.
Salam holds a doctorate in political science from France’s prestigious Sciences Po university as well as a doctorate in history from France’s Sorbonne University. He also has a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School. Salam has worked as a lecturer at several universities, including the American University of Beirut.
In 2007, he was named Lebanon’s ambassador to the United Nations, where he served for 10 years. In 2018, Salam was elected as a judge on the ICJ and in February last year he was elected as president of the court becoming the first Lebanese citizen to hold the post.
Salam is married to journalist Sahar Baasiri, who for many years was a columnist at Lebanon’s leading An-Nahar daily. Baasiri has been serving since 2018 as Lebanon’s ambassador to UNESCO.
