Lebanon PM Forms New Government, Pledging Reforms

A handout photo made available by the Lebanese Presidency’s press office shows Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (L) meeting with Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam (R) at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, outside Beirut, Lebanon, 08 February 2025. (EPA/Lebanese Presidency)
A handout photo made available by the Lebanese Presidency’s press office shows Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (L) meeting with Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam (R) at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, outside Beirut, Lebanon, 08 February 2025. (EPA/Lebanese Presidency)
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Lebanon PM Forms New Government, Pledging Reforms

A handout photo made available by the Lebanese Presidency’s press office shows Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (L) meeting with Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam (R) at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, outside Beirut, Lebanon, 08 February 2025. (EPA/Lebanese Presidency)
A handout photo made available by the Lebanese Presidency’s press office shows Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (L) meeting with Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam (R) at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, outside Beirut, Lebanon, 08 February 2025. (EPA/Lebanese Presidency)

Lebanon formed a new government on Saturday, following unusually direct US intervention in the process and in a step intended to bring the country closer to accessing reconstruction funds following a devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Speaking to reporters at the presidential palace, new Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the 24-member cabinet would prioritize financial reforms, reconstruction and the implementation of a United Nations resolution seen as a cornerstone to stability on the Lebanese border with Israel.

The announcement came after more than three weeks of talks with rival political parties in Lebanon - where government posts are parceled out according to sect - and days of deadlock over the Shiite ministers, usually named by Iran-backed Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal.

But Washington has pushed back against Hezbollah's sway in any new government.

US deputy Middle East envoy Morgan Ortagus said on Friday that Washington considered Hezbollah's involvement in the new cabinet a "red line" and thanked Israel for dealing devastating blows to the group, in a controversial statement that sparked protests in Lebanon.

Ultimately, Hezbollah's ally Amal - which is headed by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri - was allowed to choose four of the new cabinet's members, including Finance Minister Yassin Jaber, and give its nod of approval to a fifth.

That prevents Hezbollah and its allies from wielding a "blocking third" in the government, where a two-thirds vote is needed to pass some decisions.

The US embassy in Lebanon welcomed the cabinet announcement, saying it hoped it would rebuild Lebanon's state institutions and implement needed reforms.

KEY TO REFORMS

The Christian Lebanese Forces Party, which is fiercely opposed to Hezbollah and has not been part of a cabinet in more than five years, also picked four ministers, including Foreign Affairs Minister Youssef Raji and Energy Minister Joseph Saddi.

Salam said he hoped the politically diverse cabinet would "work in harmony".

"This government will seek to restore confidence between citizens and the state, between Lebanon and its Arab surroundings, and between Lebanon and the international community," he said.

Lebanon has been hit hard over the last half-decade by a financial collapse that impoverished large parts of the population, a cataclysmic explosion at the Beirut port and a more than year-long war between Israel and Hezbollah that destroyed swathes of the country.

Forming a cabinet was seen as an essential step to undertaking reforms that could open the door to a financing plan under the International Monetary Fund and accessing support from key Gulf countries to help rebuild destroyed areas.

The United Nations said the government formation "heralds a new and brighter chapter for Lebanon", and said it hoped to work with the new cabinet on reforms and implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for disarming armed groups in Lebanon - seen as a reference to Hezbollah.

Salam said on Saturday the new cabinet would prioritize implementing that resolution, along with the ceasefire deal that ended the last year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

That deal stipulates that Israeli troops should leave southern Lebanon, Hezbollah should pull out its fighters and arms and the Lebanese army should deploy in the area by Feb. 18.

The cabinet is now charged with drafting a policy statement - a broad outline of the upcoming government's approach and priorities - and will then need a vote of confidence from Lebanon's parliament to be fully empowered.

Lebanese president Joseph Aoun, who enjoyed US backing as army commander, was elected as president on January 9 and nominated Salam to form a new government days later. Salam had been serving as the head of the International Court of Justice.

Salam's nomination was the latest signal of a dramatic shift in the power balance in Lebanon, following the heavy blows Israel dealt to Hezbollah, the ousting in December of Hezbollah's Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad and Aoun's election last month.



Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.