The ambassadors of the quintet committee (United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar) continued on Thursday their meetings with various Lebanese parties and officials, which they had started on Tuesday, aiming to unblock the presidential election.
Egyptian Ambassador Alaa Moussa announced that the quintet “concluded on Thursday the first round of meetings with political blocs, which will be followed by a meeting with House Speaker Nabih Berri, probably early next week.”
According to Moussa, “the general atmosphere is positive,” even if it is “necessary to work further on the issue of trust, with a view to breaking the deadlock in the presidential election.”
“Common ground exists, but it is also very important to extend it further, which is what the Group of Five is currently working on,” he continued, hoping to achieve “concrete results in the next phase.”
Moussa’s comments came after meetings with the head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) Gebran Bassil and MPs from Hezbollah’s bloc. The meeting with Bassil took place in the absence of the US ambassador, Lisa Johnson, because of US sanctions against him for corruption. Johnson and the Saudi ambassador Walid Boukhari did not take part in the discussions with the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc.
Bassil has reportedly told the ambassadors that he supports a dialogue on the presidential election if there is a guarantee that it would be followed by an electoral session, the local al-Markazia agency said, citing sources close to the FPM chief.
According to the same sources, Bassil expressed his preference for a prior consensus on a candidate for the head of state.
At the end of the meeting, Moussa and Bassil agreed on “the need to speed up the election of a president of the Republic and to hold consultations between the various political poles to this end.”
Bassil also called for separating the developments in southern Lebanon and the presidential election. “On the contrary,” he said, “what is happening in the region (the war in Gaza, editor’s note) should be an incentive to finalize this dossier as soon as possible.”
French ambassador Hervé Magro, Qatari ambassador Saoud ben Abdel Rahman al-Thani, and the Egyptian ambassador then visited Haret Hreik, where the head of the Hezbollah bloc, MP Mohammad Raad, reiterated his party’s position that it is in favor of dialogue between parliamentarians on the presidential issue, provided that it is led by the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, and without preconditions.
At the end of their tour, the five ambassadors held an evaluation meeting at Alaa Moussa’s residence.
