Lebanon heading to oblivion: Head of economic, social advisory body

Special Lebanon heading to oblivion: Head of economic, social advisory body
A policeman stands guard next to a bank window that was broken by depositors, Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 14, 2022. (AP Photo)
Short Url
Updated 20 February 2023
Follow

Lebanon heading to oblivion: Head of economic, social advisory body

Lebanon heading to oblivion: Head of economic, social advisory body
  • Lebanese banks’ strike continues as reform group claims prosecution launched against Societe Generale, its chairman
  • Riad Salameh: The black market in Lebanon is outside the control of the central bank, which has become unable to solve crises because solutions require a concrete national project

BEIRUT: Lebanon could be headed to oblivion, the head of the country’s independent advisory body warned on Monday.

Charles Arbid, president of the Economic and Social Council, told an emergency meeting at the headquarters of the General Labor Union that with no savior on the horizon, the nation risked spiralling out of control.

He said: “We fear that Lebanon as we know it is changing under the leaders who could not care less about its fate.

“Many countries have been forgotten and left to their fate. Poverty and violence prevailed after the world lost interest in them.”

The council, a product of the Taif Agreement, is tasked with conveying the opinion of sectors involved in the formulation of economic and social policies in Lebanon.

The meeting, titled “Save the homeland,” came as a strike by Lebanese banks over judicial prosecutions against them and the non-approval of the Capital Control Bill entered its third week.

Also, on Monday, the Lebanese pound dropped to 81,000 to the dollar. Central bank financial operations fell to $10 million per day as the platform lost its influence on the currency market, specifically the black market.

A source in the Lebanese prime minister’s office told Arab News: “Measures to resolve this impasse must be taken by the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Judicial Council. The prime minister cannot intervene, even though he wishes he could since the issue is affecting Lebanon’s stability.”

The Association of Banks in Lebanon said it would only end its strike when judicial prosecutions carried out by Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun stopped. And it urged the Supreme Judicial Council to suspend prosecutions by some judges and block lawsuits against banks by depositors.

The association has refused to be held fully responsible for the country’s financial crisis.

Central bank governor, Riad Salameh, told Al-Qahera News: “The black market in Lebanon is outside the control of the central bank, which has become unable to solve crises because solutions require a concrete national project.”

Meanwhile, The People Want to Reform the System — an association to fight corruption — announced that judge Aoun had decided on Monday to prosecute Societe Generale and its chairman, Antoun Sehnaoui, on charges of money laundering, while freezing the bank’s funds. The judge was acting based on a complaint submitted by the association.

The group said Aoun had referred the case to Nicolas Mansour, the first investigative judge in the Mount Lebanon Court of Appeal, requesting an inquiry and the issuance of necessary arrest warrants.

On Monday, the Parliamentary Bureau failed to set a date for a legislative session to discuss and approve the Capital Control Bill.

Parliament’s Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab said: “We recognize the parliament’s right to legislate, as happened previously, but the capital control draft, according to what was issued by the joint committees, must be accompanied by a comprehensive plan.”

Dozens of MPs have refused to hold a legislative session until a new president is elected.

MPs Melhem Khalaf and Najat Saliba have been staging a parliament sit-in for more than a month in protest over the presidential election stalemate.

Addressing their fellow MPs over Zoom, they urged them to, “face those who are squabbling over the presidential election and delaying it, in search for a president that serves their personal criteria.”

They said the situation violated the provisions of the constitution and added: “It is a mass suicide; rather a deliberate killing and extermination of an entire people.”

Tensions between the Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah have intensified after FPM head Gebran Bassil on Sunday criticized Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah for his party’s support of Marada Movement leader Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency.

Bassil said: “We choose a president based on conviction. No one can impose anyone on us, and no one can threaten us with chaos.”


Lebanese army says it exchanged smoke-bomb fire with Israel

Lebanese army says it exchanged smoke-bomb fire with Israel
Updated 57 min 43 sec ago
Follow

Lebanese army says it exchanged smoke-bomb fire with Israel

Lebanese army says it exchanged smoke-bomb fire with Israel
  • Tensions have flared along the frontier this summer, with rockets fired at Israel during flare-ups of Israeli-Palestinian violence

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s army said on Wednesday it had exchanged smoke bombs with Israeli troops at the border, the second such incident in a week.
The Lebanese army, in an online statement, said Israeli troops had fired smoke bombs at a Lebanese patrol that was accompanying workers removing “infringements” that the army said had been set up by the Israelis north of the Blue Line.
Tensions have flared along the frontier this summer, with rockets fired at Israel during flare-ups of Israeli-Palestinian violence, and members of the heavily armed Lebanese group Hezbollah or its supporters facing off with Israeli forces.
Neither the Israeli military nor the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon immediately responded to Reuters requests for comment.
The current demarcation line between the two countries is known as the Blue Line, a frontier mapped by the United Nations that marks the line to which Israeli forces withdrew when they left south Lebanon in 2000.
Lebanese army troops “responded by firing smoke bombs toward enemy troops,” the statement said.
It was the second such incident in a week after the troops exchanged tear gas and smoke bombs over a similar dispute at the Blue Line.


Third Bahraini soldier dies after Houthi drone attack close to Saudi border

Third Bahraini soldier dies after Houthi drone attack close to Saudi border
Updated 27 September 2023
Follow

Third Bahraini soldier dies after Houthi drone attack close to Saudi border

Third Bahraini soldier dies after Houthi drone attack close to Saudi border

DUBAI: A third Bahraini serviceman died on Wednesday following a Houthi drone attack on Monday against forces of the Saudi-led coalition in Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen, Bahrain’s state news agency said.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement has battled the Saudi-led coalition since 2015 in a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands and left 80 percent of the population dependent on aid.
The drone attack represents a major escalation after more than a year of relative calm in Yemen as peace efforts gain momentum. It could jeopardize talks between Saudi and Houthi officials who have just held another round of negotiations on a potential agreement toward ending the conflict.


Iran says it puts imaging satellite sucessfully into orbit amid tensions with West

Iran says it puts imaging satellite sucessfully into orbit amid tensions with West
Updated 27 September 2023
Follow

Iran says it puts imaging satellite sucessfully into orbit amid tensions with West

Iran says it puts imaging satellite sucessfully into orbit amid tensions with West
  • here was no immediate acknowledgment from Western officials of the launch

DUBAI: Iran claimed on Wednesday that it has successfully put an imaging satellite into space.
The state-run IRNA news agency, quoting the country’s Communication Minister Isa Zarepour, said the Noor-3 satellite had been put in an orbit 450 kilometers (280 miles) above the Earth’s surface.
There was no immediate acknowledgment from Western officials of the launch or of the satellite being put into orbit. Iran has had a series of failed launches in recent years.
Zarepour said the aerospace arm of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched the satellite carrier, which has had success in launching satellites from its previously secret launch program. Authorities did not immediately release images of the launch.
The United States has alleged that Iran’s satellite launches defy a UN Security Council resolution and has called on Tehran to undertake no activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The US intelligence community’s 2022 threat assessment claims such a satellite launch vehicle “shortens the timeline” to an intercontinental ballistic missile for Iran as it uses “similar technologies.”
Iran, which has long said it does not seek nuclear weapons, previously maintained that its satellite launches and rocket tests do not have a military component. US intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency say Iran abandoned an organized military nuclear program in 2003. Iran has maintained its program is for peaceful purposes.


Qatar Airways executive says invasive gynecological examinations of passengers won’t be repeated

Qatar Airways executive says invasive gynecological examinations of passengers won’t be repeated
Updated 27 September 2023
Follow

Qatar Airways executive says invasive gynecological examinations of passengers won’t be repeated

Qatar Airways executive says invasive gynecological examinations of passengers won’t be repeated
  • Qatar Airways Senior Vice President for Global Sales Matt Raos described the incident as “a one-off incident, a very extreme incident.”

CANBERRA, Australia: A senior Qatar Airways executive told an Australian Senate inquiry on Wednesday there would be no repeat of an incident at Doha’s international airport in 2020 in which female passengers were subjected to invasive gynecological examinations.
Australian Transport Minister Catherine King said three weeks ago that the examinations of 13 Australian women who had boarded a Qatar Airways plane to Sydney were a factor in her decision in July to refuse the Qatar government-owned airline additional flights to Australia.
Qatar Airways Senior Vice President for Global Sales Matt Raos described the incident, which occurred when authorities were looking for the mother of a newborn baby found abandoned in a Hamad International Airport trash can, as “a one-off incident, a very extreme incident.”
“We’ve had nothing like it previously in our history and we’re completely committed to ensuring nothing like this ever happens again,” Raos told the committee.
Raos was responding to government Sen. Tony Sheldon, who had asked for a guarantee on behalf of female passengers who feared they would be subjected to such treatment.
The Doha-based executive declined to detail the incident because five women are suing the airline in Australian Federal Court.
“We are participating in that process. We think it’s a very important process and we need to honor it and respect it. It does preclude us from going further into this topic today,” Raos said.
“The outcome of that Federal Court case is something that we will honor and abide,” Raos added.
The five Australian women, whose names are suppressed by a court gag order, say they were taken off the flight to Sydney at Doha at gunpoint by guards and were searched without consent.
Qatar Airways provided no response to their complaints and offered no apology, the women said.
They wrote to Catherine King through their lawyer in June urging that Qatar Airways not be allowed to double its number of Australian services from the current 28 flights per week.
“It is our strong belief that Qatar Airways is not fit to carry passengers around the globe let alone to major Australian airports,” they wrote.
“When you are considering Qatar Airways’ bid for extra landing rights, we beg you to consider its insensitive and irresponsible treatment of us and its failure to ensure the safety and dignity of its passengers,” they said.
Raos said Qatar was “surprised and shocked” that Australia had rejected without explanation its application for additional services to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth which was made on Aug. 22, 2022.
Qatar Senior Vice President Fathi Atti told the inquiry that the airline learned of the decision through the news media on July 10 and did not receive official notification from the Australian government until 10 days later.
The airline said it calculated that the additional services would have provided Australia with 3 billion Australian dollars ($1.9 billion) in economic benefits over five years.
Earlier this month, King said her decision was made in the “context” of women’s complaints about their treatment.
“There is no one factor that I would point to that swayed my decision one way or the other,” King told reporters.
The committee is examining a number of Australia’s bilateral air service agreements.


Small fire at Baghdad’s Al-Rasheed hotel extinguished; occupants have returned to rooms - official

Small fire at Baghdad’s Al-Rasheed hotel extinguished; occupants have returned to rooms - official
Updated 27 September 2023
Follow

Small fire at Baghdad’s Al-Rasheed hotel extinguished; occupants have returned to rooms - official

Small fire at Baghdad’s Al-Rasheed hotel extinguished; occupants have returned to rooms - official

BAGHDAD: A small fire that led to guests and diplomatic personnel being evacuated from Baghdad’s Al-Rasheed hotel has been brought under control, an official at the hotel told Reuters via phone early on Wednesday.

The hotel houses several envoys from Gulf states.

The small fire occurred in kitchen, and an official described the evacuation as a routine precautionary measure, saying guests had safely returned to their rooms.

The hotel is in Iraq’s highly fortified Green Zone which hosts parliament, many government buildings and foreign embassies.