Lebanon’s FM resigns over risks of a “failed state”

Beirut, Aug 3 (efe-epa).- Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti on Monday tendered his resignation to Prime Minister Hassan Diab saying the country risked becoming a failed state.

“Lebanon today is slipping into a failed state, God willing it won’t,” Hitti said in a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry.

“I had pinned high hopes on change and reform; but the reality aborted every hope in making promising starts out of appalling ends,” he added.

Hitti lamented the inefficient administration that failed to carry out “the comprehensive structural reform demanded by our national community and the international community invites us to do it”.

“I participated in this government on the basis that I have one employer named Lebanon, and I found in my country many employers and conflicting interests,” he added.

“I will not compromise my principles, what I believe in, for any position or authority,” the statement ran.

Last June the director-general of the Ministry of Finance Alain Befain, who was in charge of the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, resigned from his post dealing a blow to Diab’s cabinet.

Befani justified his decision by saying he did not want to be part of the “collapse” that Lebanon was facing amid its worst economic crisis in decades.

Lebanon has been through its worst economic crisis since the civil war (1975-1990) which forced the country to suspend the external debt payment in March when it failed to pay a $1.2 billion loan.

Lebanese authorities have negotiated a rescue plan with IMF, which conditioned the aid to structural reforms in one of the most indebted countries in the world where a sectarian political system has reigned after the war.