An international conference in support of Lebanon will be held on October 24 in Paris

The date was previously unknown. The international conference devoted to Lebanon, requested by Emmanuel Macron, will be held on October 24 to mobilize the international community to help the population and to support the country’s institutions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced this Wednesday. “This ministerial conference will bring together Lebanon’s partner states, the United Nations, the European Union and international, regional and civil society organizations,” he said in a statement.

On Saturday, the French president announced the holding of this conference without specifying the date. This “will aim to mobilize the international community to respond to the protection and emergency relief needs of the population of Lebanon and to identify ways of supporting Lebanon’s institutions, in particular the Lebanese Armed Forces. , guarantors of the internal stability of the country,” the ministry also indicated this Wednesday.

Paris will request a ceasefire

After having weakened Hamas, whose attack on an unprecedented scale on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil triggered deadly hostilities in the Gaza Strip, Israel is now waging an open war in Lebanon against pro-Iranian Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian Islamist movement. The stated objective is to distance this pro-Iranian Shiite movement from the border areas where it is established and to stop its rocket fire towards the north of Israel in order to allow the return to this region of some 60,000 of its displaced inhabitants. .

He adds that the election of a president in Lebanon is “the first step in getting political institutions back on track.” “We encourage Lebanese political leaders to take their responsibilities to put the country on track,” said the head of French diplomacy Jean-Noël Barrot this Wednesday, interviewed in the Senate. “For Lebanon to maintain its unity and for Lebanon to maintain its stability, Lebanon must have a president,” he insisted.

He also observed that “the regional conflagration, if it were to occur, concerns us all, it concerns all French people”. “The prices of gasoline and gas, the terrorist threat, the question of migration, all of this is playing out today in part in the Middle East,” he reacted, adding that France was fully mobilized “ to work through diplomatic channels so that the fire stops, so that the suffering stops and so that Lebanon, in its territorial integrity and sovereignty, regains its true identity.”

According to official Lebanese figures, the violence has left 2,000 dead since September 23, including more than a thousand since October with the start of Israeli strikes on the south and east of its territory, as well as on the southern suburbs of Beirut. , a Hezbollah stronghold.