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Lebanon Optimistic on Reaching Maritime Border Deal with Israel

A base for UN peacekeepers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is pictured in Naqoura, near the Lebanese-Israeli border, southern Lebanon November 11, 2020. REUTERS/Aziz Taher
A base for UN peacekeepers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is pictured in Naqoura, near the Lebanese-Israeli border, southern Lebanon November 11, 2020. REUTERS/Aziz Taher
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Lebanon Optimistic on Reaching Maritime Border Deal with Israel

A base for UN peacekeepers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is pictured in Naqoura, near the Lebanese-Israeli border, southern Lebanon November 11, 2020. REUTERS/Aziz Taher
A base for UN peacekeepers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is pictured in Naqoura, near the Lebanese-Israeli border, southern Lebanon November 11, 2020. REUTERS/Aziz Taher

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said on Friday there is more optimism than ever on reaching a deal to delineate the country's maritime border with Israel via US mediation, according to a tweet from the ministry's account.

"There has never been optimism to the extent that there is today," Bou Habib said, noting that the US official mediating the dispute, Amos Hochstein, would arrive in Beirut over the weekend for talks with Lebanese officials.

Lebanon and Israel are locked in US-mediated negotiations to delineate a shared maritime border that would help determine which oil and gas resources belong to which country and pave the way for more exploration.

Hochstein met Israeli negotiators in June and updated them on the results of a visit to Lebanon earlier that month, the Israeli energy ministry said at the time.

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Syria's Foreign Minister Calls for Lifting of Sanctions

Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani attends a meeting on Syria, following the recent ousting of president Bashar al-Assad, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed
Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani attends a meeting on Syria, following the recent ousting of president Bashar al-Assad, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed
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Syria's Foreign Minister Calls for Lifting of Sanctions

Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani attends a meeting on Syria, following the recent ousting of president Bashar al-Assad, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed
Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani attends a meeting on Syria, following the recent ousting of president Bashar al-Assad, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, January 12, 2025. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

Syria’s new foreign minister has called for a lifting of sanctions that were imposed on his country during former President Bashar Assad’s rule.
In an interview with Turkish state broadcaster TRT that aired Thursday, Asaad al-Shibani also said Syria’s new leadership wanted to “open a new page” in its diplomatic relations with countries that had cut diplomatic ties with Damascus during the Syrian civil war.
“The economic sanctions are one of the problems that the old regime left us,” al-Shibani said in the interview, which aired a day after he met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish officials in Ankara. “We are saying that there is no longer any need for them. The old regime is gone.”
“These sanctions must be lifted in order for people to live in better economic conditions and for security and economic stability to be achieved,” he added.