French President Emmanuel Macron told Lebanese Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati that France would do “everything in its power” to stop violence from spiraling between Lebanon and Israel, his office said in a statement issued late Friday night.
Macron told Mikati in Paris that he would “continue to act for Lebanon’s stability” to protect it from escalating tensions in the Middle East.
The region has been plunged into turmoil since October 7, when Hamas militants launched an attack against Israel. Since October 8, Hezbollah had opened the southern front in support of Hamas in its war in Gaza.
The spectre of a regional war has only been accentuated in the past week following Iran’s first direct attack on Israel with hundreds of drones and missiles, and reports of an Israeli retaliation.
Macron brought up France’s participation in a UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon — on Israel’s northern border — and “underlined everyone’s responsibility towards it,” his office added.
The French president also discussed Lebanon’s long-running political crisis and exhorted the Lebanese political leaders “to finally put an end to the institutional crisis.”
Lebanon has been in a presidential vacuum since the end of former president Michel Aoun’s mandate on October 30, 2022.
With AFP
