Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati (L) is welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday at an international summit in Paris organized to raise funds to assist his country. Photo by Alain Jocard/EPA-EFE
Oct. 24 (UPI) — French President Emmanuel Marcon kicked off an international summit in Paris on Thursday that aims to raise $540 million for humanitarian and civil security assistance for war-torn Lebanon with a $108 million pledge.
More than 70 countries and international bodies sent delegations to the conference called by France to brainstorm ways to help Lebanon which has been ground down by a weak economy, political instability, corruption and war, taking a nose in the four years since a massive blast at an ammunition plant destroyed much of central Beirut.
The situation in the former French protectorate has worsened further since Israel launched a large-scale ground and air offensive this month targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants based there.
The United States did not participate, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken remaining in the Middle East for talks in Qatar aimed at kickstarting a cease-fire in Gaza that he hopes to revive.
Speaking at the opening of the summit, Macron said France’s contribution would go some way to reaching the $540 million target.
He said taking care of civilians displaced by the fighting, mainly from the south, and keeping the peace between local residents and those arriving from battle zones would require a huge amount of funds.
He also promised support for the country’s institutions, including the regular Lebanese Armed Forces by assisting with the training of 6,000 additional troops.
Macron rebuked Israel and Hezbollah saying both parties were responsible for the dire situation into which the Lebanese people had been plunged, demanding Hezbollah stop all its aggressive actions from “indiscriminate” rocket fire into Israel to targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence.
Macron urged Israel to enter into a cease-fire deal with Hezbollah on the grounds it “knows its military successes do not lead to victory,” an allusion to Israel’s past wars in Lebanon, and warned it over a spate of “unjustified” attacks on U.N. Peacekeepers stationed in the south by Israel Defense Forces.
“We have been talking a lot in recent days about a war of civilizations or about civilizations that must be defended. I am not sure that we defend civilization by sowing barbarism ourselves,” Macron said, referencing comments by Netanyahu on Wednesday in which he appeared to suggest France should be more supportive of a country at the forefront of a “war of civilizations against barbarism.”
Macron complained that there had been zero progress in the month since he and U.S. President Joe Biden called for a pause of 21 days in the fighting saying that Washington had instead allowed Israel to mount a massive aerial offensive against Hezbollah to force it to lay down its weapons.
France has been pushing for a cease-fire that requires Hezbollah to renounce the war it launched against Israel began in support of Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks last year so far without success with progress derailed for now by Israel’s decapitation of the organization’s entire senior leadership.
Macron also seemed to support an expansion of the peacekeepers’ mandate to help the Lebanese government gain sustainable control of all of its territory, as opposed to the current situation where it is forced to share power with non-state factions.
But he stressed it would have to be “robust, verifiable and operational enough so that everyone, in Lebanon, in Israel, at the United Nations, is convinced that the Lebanese state will effectively exercise its authority over the entire territory in the long term.”
Italy, whose troop contingent comprises a large portion of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, has pitched the idea of a buffer-plus peacekeeping zone covering the area from the southern border with Israel to Litani.
It also backs training regular soldiers serving in the LAF.