Lebanese PM to Meet Financial Adviser Lazard Soon over Rescue Plan

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati arrives to attend a cabinet meeting at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. (AP)
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati arrives to attend a cabinet meeting at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. (AP)
TT
20

Lebanese PM to Meet Financial Adviser Lazard Soon over Rescue Plan

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati arrives to attend a cabinet meeting at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. (AP)
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati arrives to attend a cabinet meeting at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. (AP)

Prime Minister Najib Mikati will meet with the advisory firm Lazard soon to see how a financial recovery plan it drafted for Lebanon could be developed into a "more realistic" vision for getting the country out of its crisis, he said on Monday.

Mikati also said Lebanon would be very lucky if it was able to reach a framework for an agreement with the International Monetary Fund by the end of the year. Mikati took office earlier this month determined to revive IMF talks.

A billionaire tycoon, Mikati faces a difficult path to remedying one of the sharpest financial meltdowns of modern times. The challenges include his government's limited shelf-life, with elections due next Spring.

In the most detailed comments yet on his approach for trying to reverse Lebanon's devastating financial meltdown, Mikati said in an interview with broadcaster LBCI that there would be a fair distribution of the losses in the financial system and to protect small depositors.

Lazard helped the previous government draw up a financial rescue plan that identified losses of some $90 billion in the financial system.

But the plan was shot down by objections from the banks, which said it made them foot too much of the bill for the collapse, in addition to opposition from the central bank and the ruling political elite that got Lebanon into its crisis.

Reaching agreement on the losses is seen as the first step towards a deal with the IMF, which endorsed the figures in the previous government's plan.

"I will not announce anything except if the whole financial recovery plan is complete," Mikati told LBCI.

"We have the financial recovery plan, I have asked the company that set it to come to Lebanon and they will come and I will have a meeting with them in the coming days ... to see how we can update this plan", Mikati said.

"I want to ask for a more realistic plan to get out of this crisis we are in," he added.

Mikati said he was not planning to privatize state assets.

Wants to protect small depositors
An IMF agreement is seen as Lebanon's only path to accessing aid from foreign donors who are demanding reforms to address the root causes of the collapse, including state corruption and waste.

"We will be very lucky if we finish before new year," Mikati said when asked about how long it might take to reach an IMF deal.

"We will be lucky if we put the main framework (by then)."

Mikati formed a government after a year of political deadlock that compounded an economic meltdown that has propelled three quarters of Lebanon's population into poverty and seen its currency plummet by more than 90%.

Savers have been frozen out of the paralyzed banking system, being forced to take a hair-cut of as much as 80% of the value of their deposits on withdrawals.

"I want to protect the depositor as much as possible, the small depositors, I need to see how we can do that, this is what I'm trying to do," Mikati said.

"The inclination is definitely to protect the small depositors who have between $50,000 to $70,000 accounts, and these will take their money in dollars for sure."



Sudan’s Humanitarian Crisis Worsens amid Escalating Violence

FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)
FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)
TT
20

Sudan’s Humanitarian Crisis Worsens amid Escalating Violence

FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)
FILE - People prepare local crops of sugar cane and watermelons for sale, at Abu Shouk refugee camp, where they live on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan, Oct. 8, 2010. (AP Photo/John Heilprin, File)

Fighting in Sudan's Kordofan region that has killed hundreds and ongoing violence in Darfur — the epicenters of the country's conflict — have worsened Sudan's humanitarian crisis, with aid workers warning of limited access to assistance.

The United Nations said more than 450 civilians, including at least 35 children, were killed during the weekend of July 12 in attacks in villages surrounding the town of Bara in North Kordofan province.

“The suffering in Kordofan deepens with each passing day,” Mercy Corps Country Director for Sudan Kadry Furany said in a statement shared with The Associated Press. “Communities are trapped along active and fast changing front lines, unable to flee, unable to access basic needs or lifesaving assistance.”

Sudan plunged into war after simmering tensions between the army and its rival, the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, escalated to fighting in April 2023. The violence has killed at least 40,000 people and created one of the world’s worst displacement and hunger crises, according to humanitarian organizations. In recent months, much of the fighting has been concentrated in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.

On Thursday, the UN human rights office confirmed that since July 10, the RSF has killed at least 60 civilians in the town of Bara, while civil society groups reported up to 300 people were killed, the office said.

A military airstrike on Thursday in Bara killed at least 11 people, all from the same family, according to the UN office. Meanwhile, between July 10 and 14, the army killed at least 23 civilians and injured over two dozen others after striking two villages in West Kordofan.

An aid worker with Mercy Corps said his brother was fatally shot on July 13 during an attack on the village of Um Seimima in El Obeid City in North Kordofan, Grace Wairima Ndungu, the group’s communications manager told AP.

Furany said that movement between the western and eastern areas of the Kordofan region is “practically impossible.”

The intensified fighting forced Mercy Corps to temporarily suspend operations in three out of four localities, with access beyond Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, now being in “serious doubt,” Furany said, as a safe sustained humanitarian corridor is needed.

Mathilde Vu, an aid worker with the Norwegian Refugee Council who is often based in Port Sudan, told the AP that fighting has intensified in North Kordofan and West Kordofan over the past several months.

“A large number of villages are being destroyed, burned to the ground, people being displaced,” she said. “What is extremely worrying about the Kordofan is that there is very little information and not a lot of organizations are able to support. It is a complete war zone there.”

Marwan Taher, head of mission with humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, told the AP that military operations in Kordofan heightened insecurity, prompting scores of people to flee to Darfur, a region already in a dire humanitarian situation.

The NRC said that since April, Tawila has already received 379,000 people escaping violence in famine-hit Zamzam Camp and Al Fasher.

Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration recently reported that over 46,000 people were displaced from different areas in West Kordofan in May alone due to clashes between warring parties.

Taher said those fleeing El Fasher to Tawila walk long distances with barely enough clothes and little water, and sleep on the streets until they arrive at the area they want to settle in. The new wave of displacement has brought diseases, including measles, which began spreading in parts of Zalingi in Central Darfur in March and April as camps received people fleeing Kordofan.

Aid workers also warned about ongoing fighting in Darfur. Vu said there have been “uninterrupted campaigns of destruction” against civilians in North Darfur.
“In Darfur there’s been explicit targeting of civilians. There’s been explicit execution,” she said.

Shelling killed five children Wednesday in El Fasher in North Darfur, according to UN spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay. Meanwhile, between July 14 and 15, heavy rains and flooding displaced over 400 people and destroyed dozens of homes in Dar As Salam, North Darfur.

With a looming rainy season, a cholera outbreak and food insecurity, the situation in Darfur is “getting worse every day and that’s what war is,” said Taher.