Newly elected Lebanese President Joseph Aoun will hold consultations with members of parliament from Jan. 13 to nominate a prime minister, the presidency said on Friday.
Lebanon's army chief Joseph Aoun sits at the presidential palace, after he was elected as the country's President, in Baabda, Lebanon, January 9, 2025. Reuterts/Mohammed Yassin
Newly elected Lebanese President Joseph Aoun will hold consultations with members of parliament from Jan. 13 to nominate a prime minister, the presidency said on Friday.
Once named, the new prime minister must form a government, a process that often takes many months. Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati is widely seen as a frontrunner, but opposition parliamentarian Fouad Makhzoumi may have the backing of a number of lawmakers, political sources said.
The post is reserved for a Sunni Muslim in Lebanon's sectarian power-sharing system, which also reserves the presidency for a Maronite Christian and the speaker of parliament post for a Shi'ite Muslim.
Lebanon's parliament elected army chief Aoun as president on Thursday, filling a post that has been vacant since October 2022 with a general who has U.S. support and showing the weakened sway of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group after its devastating war with Israel.
In his first remarks as president on Thursday, Aoun said that he would work to assert the state's right to hold the monopoly on arms.
Mikati said on Friday that the state would begin disarming in southern Lebanon, to assert its presence across the country.
Lebanon and Israel agreed in November to a 60-day ceasefire that stipulates that only "official military and security forces" in Lebanon are authorised to carry arms.
The proposal refers to both sides' commitment to fully implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, including provisions that refer to the "disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon".
Reporting by Maya Gebeily in Beirut, Jana Choukeir and Clauda Tanios in Dubai
The past few days have unfolded like a geopolitical drama of historic proportions in Lebanon, where Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia militia long considered untouchable, appears to be teetering on the edge of a seismic shift.
In a defiant speech on Friday evening, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General, Sheikh Naim Qassem, insisted that the group “will not allow anyone to disarm it,” rejecting growing internal calls for the Lebanese state to reclaim exclusive control over the country’s weapons.
A Latin American diplomatic source revealed to the Saudi news channel Al-Hadath that Hezbollah has recently relocated approximately 400 of its regional commanders, along with their families, to several countries across South America — including Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador.
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