by france24.com — France’s visiting foreign minister on Friday pledged €15 million ($17 million) in aid to Lebanon’s schools, which have been hit hard by the country’s economic meltdown. France will not abandon Lebanese youth, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters as he visited a school in Mechref, south of Beirut, on the third and final day of his trip to Lebanon. The French financial assistance will go to a network of over 50 French and Francophone schools in the country. The announcement comes a day after Le Drian scolded Lebanon’s leadership for failing to take the measures he said are necessary to save the country from collapse. Lebanon’s education sector has been hit hard by the crisis, with schools forced to let teachers and administrators go and many facing the risk of closure. Parents, struggling to pay private school fees, are increasingly enrolling their children in already overcrowded public schools.
‘On the verge of the abyss’
The economic crisis has impacted almost all facets of life in Lebanon, a small Mediterranean country long considered a middle-income state. Since last year, unemployment has risen and poverty deepened, as foreign currency dried up and the local currency tumbled to lose more than 80 percent of its value against the dollar. Le Drian, who arrived here late Wednesday, said France could only help Lebanon face the crisis if Lebanese officials do their part, urging them to introduce much-needed reforms. Le Drian is the first senior Western official to visit the struggling country. In stern public messages, he urged Lebanese officials to go through with an audit of the country’s central bank, reform a bloated and highly indebted electricity sector, and maintain an independent judiciary. France is the former colonial power in Lebanon and has previously organised conferences that pledged assistance to Lebanon but demanded reforms to the public sector and governance. “Lebanon is on the verge of the abyss. But there are ways on the table to fix this,” he said Friday during a visit to a school in Mechref district.
IMF or bust
During the visit, Le Drian said Lebanon is on France’s list of priority countries for humanitarian assistance, adding that his country already donated €50 million ($58 million), primarily to the healthcare sector to deal with the coronavirus challenge. But Le Drian said Thursday the only way out of the financial and economic crisis for Lebanon is to secure a programme with the International Monetary Fund. Only then can France and its allies secure assistance for Lebanon, he added. Talks with the IMF have been bogged down in internal political disputes and struggles over who is to blame for banking losses.
Lebanon’s crisis is rooted in years of mismanagement and corruption. It has deepened since the government defaulted on its sovereign debt in March, the eruption of the coronavirus pandemic and the restrictions that it brought. Lebanon witnessed nationwide protests last October after the government, as part of efforts to introduce austerity measures, levied new taxes on messaging service WhatsApp. Protesters accused the government of mismanagement and years of corruption and eventually forced then-premier Saad Hariri to resign. A new government, backed by the powerful Hezbollah group and its allies was formed in January and has since been bogged down by domestic rivalries on ways to proceed with reforms and the IMF talks. (FRANCE 24 with AP)
Lebanese official finds he has COVID-19 at lunch with France’s Le Drian
BEIRUT (Reuters) – A senior Lebanese official said on Friday he discovered he had tested positive for COVID-19 during a lunch with visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. “I received a telephone call from the hospital saying the test was positive, so naturally I left the lunch and informed all those present,” Hadi Hashem, head of the Lebanese foreign minister’s office, told the local OTV broadcaster. Le Drian met with Lebanese officials on Thursday as part of an effort to urge economic reforms to the crisis-hit economy. His spokesperson had no immediate comment on the matter.
Speaking by video, Hashem told OTV he had taken a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test ahead of a planned trip to Denmark, but was now self-isolating at home until Monday before another test. “The result was unexpected but the most important thing is that the virus level is low and not contagious,” he said. After Hashem’s diagnosis, Lebanese Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti and his political affairs director also underwent PCR tests, but their results came back negative, a health ministry source told Reuters.
Lebanon recorded 147 new infections, bringing its total to 3,404 infections and 46 deaths from the novel coronavirus since February, according to official data on Friday. The country’s health minister, Hamad Hasan, told Reuters the high number of new cases and the recording of three deaths in the last 24 hours point to a “critical phase” that could require authorities to reimpose some coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
