Politics

Presidential advisor Wehbi replaces Hitti as Lebanon’s FM

Beirut, Aug 3 (efe-epa).- Lebanese president Michel Aoun’s diplomatic affair advisor Charbel Wehbi on Monday replaced Nassif Hitti as foreign minister after the latter resigned saying the country risked becoming a “failed state.”

The Lebanese presidency said on Twitter that Aoun and prime minister Hassan Diab signed a decree accepting Hitti’s resignation and named Wehbi to replace him.

Wehbi, who has been Aoun’s advisor on international politics since 2017, was the director of political affairs at the foreign ministry under former minister Gebran Bassil, Aoun’s son-in-law.

Earlier in the day, Hitti tendered his resignation to 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 said the administration had 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.

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