2023-06-27 03:55:16
Nicolas Nassif wrote in Al-Akhbar:
It will not be long for the Lebanese to forget the extra attention given to Jean-Yves Le Drian’s visit to Beirut, even if he promised a second trip. What he heard from the leaders is not the whole content. Rather, he also experienced many disappointments from his interlocutors, who are not ready at the present time for any settlement.
The mission of the French presidential envoy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to Lebanon, which has not yet ended, left many reasons for raising question marks and observations regarding what is expected of her next tour. Its problem is not so much the seriousness with which the visitor is described as the results to be contemplated following the following chapters are over. Eventually he came and left as if nothing had happened:
The first of these question marks preceded Le Drian’s arrival in Beirut, which is the distribution of the French departments in charge of the file of the Lebanese presidency to at least four official bodies: the Elysee, the Foreign Ministry, the intelligence, and the embassy in Beirut. Each of these parties – even if they have intersected information and analyzes regarding the predicament impasse – has its own different approach from the other, linked to its method of work on the one hand, and its different assessment of the French interest in leading the initiative to elect the Lebanese president on the other hand. Paris is not known for its skill and professionalism, at least like the Americans, in running the Lebanese presidential elections once. Almost the only time it wanted to intervene was in 2007, prior to the end of President Emile Lahoud’s term and its day following, through its Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, and the tasks were distributed between him and the Elysee Palace with his two influential men with President Nicolas Sarkozy Claude Guéant and Jean-David Levitt, later joined by Ambassador Jean-Claude Cousseran. The 2007 initiative ended up failing and embarrassing the late Maronite Patriarch, Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, by drawing up a list of Maronite candidates that the other party jumped over and Paris might not save. The president was not elected in 2008 until following the balance of power existing at the time between the March 8 and March 14 teams was broken following the events of May 7.
Not far away, Le Drian revived the spirit in the role of Kouchner, who moved at that time between the leaderships and returned to his country with nostalgia.
Secondly, it was not hidden from Lebanese officials and leaders to hear from Le Drian an interest in a national dialogue that Ambassador Anne Griot was not enthusiastic regarding whenever she opened up regarding it, especially before his arrival. She spoke more than once regarding her country’s unwillingness to drown in the Lebanese “mud”, in an explicit reference to the deep internal divisions. I also preferred more than once – if a preliminary dialogue was necessary – that it not deal with a detailed political program that the president would be forced to implement or suggested by himself in exchange for his election. She showed to those who spoke to her her knowledge of the limited scope of the constitutional powers of the Lebanese president, which would not enable him to set a program and impose its implementation. However, she said that the recommendation is “a road map for four or five broad addresses that can be agreed upon.” She differentiated between the program and the road map, and noted that the constitutional mechanisms facilitate the second and hinder the first.
What aroused Gryo’s interest when she told her interlocutors that the problem of the national dialogue lies in three related problems: its agenda is difficult to unify among all parties, each turning their backs on the other, and there is no reliable reference to lead the dialogue following Speaker Nabih Berri and then Maronite Patriarch Marbeshara Boutros Al-Rahi distanced themselves from his leadership. For various reasons. Gryo said that the assumed natural place for dialogue is the parliament, “but its president considers himself a party and cannot be an arbiter in it.” The third is the legacy that prevents the dialogue table from converging. She assesses, in the ambassador’s calculation, that the Lebanese are “incapable” – while confirming that they are “unfit” – to engage in dialogue.
During his tours of the leaders, Le Drian said similar words: “The current polarization prevents dialogue from taking place.”
Third, the criteria adopted by the French delegate in his meetings with Christian leaders, except for the Maronite patriarch, were not fully established: that he receive former deputy Suleiman Franjieh at the Pine Palace and have lunch together, and visit the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Representative Gebran Bassil in Bayada, and the head of the Lebanese Forces Party, Samir Geagea, in Maarab and Qaed. The army, General Joseph Aoun, is in Yarzeh, and the head of the Phalange Party, MP Sami Gemayel, is inviting deputies and candidates to the Pine Palace. That each of these come out with impressions and interpretations that are not the same as the other. To count among them the most important and decisive visit to Yarzeh, as if it dedicated the army commander to a first candidate more than before, or candidates expressing their satisfaction with what they heard strengthened their self-confidence and the chances of reaching a third candidate at some point, or the reactions differ regarding the French position in support of Franjieh’s candidacy.
None of these people heard Le Drian recommending – nor is it his mission – any candidate. However, among those who left the meetings were those who did not see France’s abandonment of Franjieh, nor the expression in return of its public enthusiasm in the manner of its well-known position. Some of them were struck by Le Drian’s statement, as he described the June 14 session, that the vote was a provocation to the French initiative and its targeting, although what happened – in their conclusion – is not sufficient to extinguish it, and what is meant by that is the retreat from Franjieh’s support.
The fourth is the validity of what was said to have been at the core of Le Drian’s dialogue with the head of the Hezbollah bloc, Representative Muhammad Raad. Some have reported Raad saying that the presidential election is not just an agreement on the name or election of the president. Hezbollah views him, while clinging to Franjieh and not seeing an alternative for himself, as being linked to the fate of all Lebanese authorities in the coming era. The presence of a president who is an ally of the party is not sufficient for him to be reassured of his position in the equation without him being an actual partner in governance, and without smelling from this situation that Hezbollah is seeking to reconsider the Taif Agreement. Complementing what Berri used to say in his permanent speeches regarding the presidential elections by linking the new era to a basket of understandings, Hezbollah is close to reaching the election of a president for the republic with a series of measures in building the new authorities to ensure its actual participation from within it.
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