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Who Is Nawaf Salam, Lebanon’s New Prime Minister-Designate?

Nawaf Salam, Lebanon's Ambassador to the United Nations, speaks to the media after Security Council consultations on the Palestinian request for full UN membership during the General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on September 26, 2011. (AFP)
Nawaf Salam, Lebanon's Ambassador to the United Nations, speaks to the media after Security Council consultations on the Palestinian request for full UN membership during the General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on September 26, 2011. (AFP)
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Who Is Nawaf Salam, Lebanon’s New Prime Minister-Designate?

Nawaf Salam, Lebanon's Ambassador to the United Nations, speaks to the media after Security Council consultations on the Palestinian request for full UN membership during the General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on September 26, 2011. (AFP)
Nawaf Salam, Lebanon's Ambassador to the United Nations, speaks to the media after Security Council consultations on the Palestinian request for full UN membership during the General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on September 26, 2011. (AFP)

President Joseph Aoun summoned jurist Nawaf Salam on Monday to designate him as Lebanon's prime minister, after a majority of Lebanese lawmakers nominated him for the post.

Salam, 71, is an attorney and judge who served as Lebanon's ambassador to the United Nations from 2007-17.

He won support from 84 of Lebanon's 128 parliamentarians, among them leading Christian and Druze factions and prominent Sunni Muslim lawmakers, including Hezbollah allies.

But Hezbollah and its ally the Shiite Amal Movement, which hold all the seats reserved for Shiite Muslims in parliament, named nobody. Hezbollah accused its opponents of seeking to exclude the group.

Salam joined International Court of Justice in 2018 and was named as its president on Feb. 6, 2024 for a three-year term, the first Lebanese judge to the hold the position.

He took over the presidency of the ICJ, which is based in The Hague, as it held its first hearing on a case filed by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has dismissed as baseless.

Salam is from a historically political family: his uncle Saeb Salam served as premier in Lebanon four times before the 1975-1990 civil war, and his older cousin Tammam Salam served as Lebanon's prime minister from 2014-2016.

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Greeks Mourn, Turks Celebrate Anniversary of Invasion that Split Cyprus

A woman walks next to the graves of soldiers killed in the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus at the Tymvos Makedonitissas military cemetery in Nicosia, Cyprus July 20, 2025. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou
A woman walks next to the graves of soldiers killed in the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus at the Tymvos Makedonitissas military cemetery in Nicosia, Cyprus July 20, 2025. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou
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Greeks Mourn, Turks Celebrate Anniversary of Invasion that Split Cyprus

A woman walks next to the graves of soldiers killed in the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus at the Tymvos Makedonitissas military cemetery in Nicosia, Cyprus July 20, 2025. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou
A woman walks next to the graves of soldiers killed in the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus at the Tymvos Makedonitissas military cemetery in Nicosia, Cyprus July 20, 2025. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou

Greek and Turkish Cypriots marked on Sunday the 51st anniversary of Türkiye’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus, an event that split the island and remains a source of tension between NATO partners Greece and Türkiye.

Air raid sirens sounded across the southern Greek Cypriot-populated parts of Cyprus at 5:30 a.m. (0230 GMT), the exact time when Turkish troops landed on the northern coast in a military intervention triggered by a brief Greece-inspired coup.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was due to attend celebrations in north Cyprus, a breakaway state recognized only by Ankara.

Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides attended a memorial service in the south to commemorate the more than 3,000 people who died in the Turkish invasion, which also drove tens of thousands of Greek Cypriots from their homes.

"Despite those who want us to forget, we will never forget, or yield an inch of land," Christodoulides said, calling celebrations in the north "shameful".

Efforts to reunify Cyprus as a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation have repeatedly failed amid deep-rooted mistrust and competing visions for the island's future.

Before the invasion, clashes between Turkish and Greek Cypriots saw Turkish Cypriots withdraw from a power-sharing government and prompted the deployment of UN peacekeepers in 1964.

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar said the invasion had brought "peace and tranquility" to the island following the "darkest years" for Turkish Cypriots.

"Their (Greek Cypriots) goal was to destroy the Turkish Cypriots," he said in a video address posted on X.

The simmering conflict complicates Türkiye's ambitions to foster closer ties with the European Union, of which both Cyprus and Greece are members.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week the two sides would continue discussions on trust-building measures, warning that "there is a long road ahead".