عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Arab World

Lebanon to Start Virtual Talks with IMF Next Week

A money exchange vendor displays Lebanese pound banknotes at his shop in Beirut, Lebanon, November 25, 2021. (Reuters)
A money exchange vendor displays Lebanese pound banknotes at his shop in Beirut, Lebanon, November 25, 2021. (Reuters)
TT
TT

Lebanon to Start Virtual Talks with IMF Next Week

A money exchange vendor displays Lebanese pound banknotes at his shop in Beirut, Lebanon, November 25, 2021. (Reuters)
A money exchange vendor displays Lebanese pound banknotes at his shop in Beirut, Lebanon, November 25, 2021. (Reuters)

Lebanese officials will start talks with the International Monetary Fund on Monday, an official government source told Reuters.

An IMF spokesperson also told Reuters on Saturday that a team will start virtual talks with Lebanese authorities next week.

The Lebanese government has said it hopes to reach an initial agreement with the fund for financial support between January and February. Lebanon is in the grip of an unprecedented financial crisis and an IMF deal is widely seen as the only way for it to secure aid.

The fund said in December it was assessing a $69 billion figure announced by Lebanese officials for losses in the country's financial sector.

Disagreements in Lebanon over the size of the losses and how they should be distributed torpedoed IMF talks in 2020. The central bank, banks and political elite rejected figures set out in a government plan that was endorsed by the IMF at the time.

Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati said in September that the financial recovery plan to be drawn up by his cabinet will include a fair distribution of losses suffered by the financial system, but the cabinet hasn't convened since October.

It will convene again on Monday to discuss the 2022 budget, but no clear details have been released about the recovery plan.

The Lebanese financial system collapsed in 2019 because of decades of corruption and waste in the state and the unsustainable way it was financed. The trigger was slowing inflows of hard currency into the banking system, which lent heavily to the government.

Several reforms the IMF would likely seek, including cutting subsidies and unifying the numerous exchange rates in Lebanon's chaotic cash economy, are already becoming realities as hard currency dries up, political sources say.

Most Viewed

 
 
Arab World

Three Dead After Flooding Hits Northwest Syria

A child watches as civil defense teams open flooded roads in Idlib. (SANA)
A child watches as civil defense teams open flooded roads in Idlib. (SANA)
TT
TT

Three Dead After Flooding Hits Northwest Syria

A child watches as civil defense teams open flooded roads in Idlib. (SANA)
A child watches as civil defense teams open flooded roads in Idlib. (SANA)

Two children and a Syrian Red Crescent volunteer have died as a result of flooding in the country's northwest, state media said on Sunday.

The heavy rains in Syria's Idlib region and the coastal province of Latakia have also wreaked havoc in displacement camps, according to authorities, who have launched rescue operations and set up shelters in the areas.

State news agency SANA reported "the death of a Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer and the injury of four others as they carried out their humanitarian duties" in Latakia province.

The Syrian Red Crescent said in a statement that the "a mission vehicle veered into a valley", killing a female volunteer and injuring four others, as they went to rescue people stranded by flash floods.

"A fifth volunteer was injured while attempting to rescue a child trapped by the floodwaters," it added.

SANA said two children died on Saturday "due to heavy flooding that swept through the Ain Issa area" in the north of Latakia province.

Authorities said Sunday they were working to clear roads in displacement camps in flooded parts of Idlib province.

The emergencies and disaster management ministry said 14 displacement camps in part of Idlib province were affected, with tents swamped, belongings swept away and around 300 families directly impacted.

Around seven million people remain internally displaced in Syria, according to the United Nations refugee agency, some 1.4 million of them living in camps and sites in the country's northwest and northeast.

The December 2024 ouster of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad after more than 13 years of civil war revived hopes for many to return home, but the destruction of housing and a lack of basic infrastructure in heavily damaged areas has been a major barrier.

Arab World

Hamas’s Meshal Rejects Disarmament or 'Foreign Rule'

Boys walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on February 8, 2026. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
Boys walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on February 8, 2026. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TT
TT

Hamas’s Meshal Rejects Disarmament or 'Foreign Rule'

Boys walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on February 8, 2026. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
Boys walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on February 8, 2026. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

A senior Hamas leader said Sunday that the Palestinian movement would not surrender its weapons nor accept foreign intervention in Gaza, pushing back against US and Israeli demands.

"Criminalizing the resistance, its weapons, and those who carried it out is something we should not accept," Khaled Meshal said at a conference in Doha.

"As long as there is occupation, there is resistance. Resistance is a right of peoples under occupation ... something nations take pride in," said Meshal, who previously headed the group.

A US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza is in its second phase, which foresees that demilitarization of the territory -- including the disarmament of Hamas -- along with a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Hamas has repeatedly said that disarmament is a red line, although it has indicated it could consider handing over its weapons to a future Palestinian governing authority.

Israeli officials say that Hamas still has around 20,000 fighters and about 60,000 Kalashnikovs in Gaza.

A Palestinian technocratic committee has been set up with a goal of taking over the day-to-day governance in the battered Gaza Strip, but it remains unclear whether, or how, it will address the issue of demilitarization.

The committee operates under the so-called "Board of Peace," an initiative launched by US President Donald Trump.

Originally conceived to oversee the Gaza truce and post-war reconstruction, the board's mandate has since expanded, prompting concerns among critics that it could evolve into a rival to the United Nations.

Trump unveiled the board at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos last month, where leaders and officials from nearly two dozen countries joined him in signing its founding charter.

Alongside the Board of Peace, Trump also created a Gaza Executive Board - an advisory panel to the Palestinian technocratic committee - comprising international figures including US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, as well as former British prime minister Tony Blair.

On Sunday, Meshal urged the Board of Peace to adopt what he called a "balanced approach" that would allow for Gaza's reconstruction and the flow of aid to its roughly 2.2 million residents, while warning that Hamas would "not accept foreign rule" over Palestinian territory.

"We adhere to our national principles and reject the logic of guardianship, external intervention, or the return of a mandate in any form," Meshal said.
"Palestinians are to govern Palestinians. Gaza belongs to the people of Gaza and to Palestine. We will not accept foreign rule," he added.

Arab World

Rescue Teams Search for Survivors in Building Collapse that Killed at Least 2 in Northern Lebanon

A Lebanese flag is pictured, in the aftermath of a massive explosion, in Beirut's damaged port area, Lebanon August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
A Lebanese flag is pictured, in the aftermath of a massive explosion, in Beirut's damaged port area, Lebanon August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
TT
TT

Rescue Teams Search for Survivors in Building Collapse that Killed at Least 2 in Northern Lebanon

A Lebanese flag is pictured, in the aftermath of a massive explosion, in Beirut's damaged port area, Lebanon August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
A Lebanese flag is pictured, in the aftermath of a massive explosion, in Beirut's damaged port area, Lebanon August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

At least two people were killed and four rescued from the rubble of a multistory apartment building that collapsed Sunday in the city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, state media reported.

Rescue teams were continuing to dig through the rubble. It was not immediately clear how many people were in the building when it fell.

The bodies pulled out were of a child and a woman, the state-run National News Agency reported.

Dozens of people crowded around the site of the crater left by the collapsed building, with some shooting in the air.

The building was in the neighborhood of Bab Tabbaneh, one of the poorest areas in Lebanon’s second largest city, where residents have long complained of government neglect and shoddy infrastructure. Building collapses are not uncommon in Tripoli due to poor building standards, according to The AP news.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry announced that those injured in the collapse would receive treatment at the state’s expense.

The national syndicate for property owners in a statement called the collapse the result of “blatant negligence and shortcomings of the Lebanese state toward the safety of citizens and their housing security,” and said it is “not an isolated incident.”

The syndicate called for the government to launch a comprehensive national survey of buildings at risk of collapse.