SAWT BEIRUT INTERNATIONAL

| 28 March 2024, Thursday |

Bou Habib: Contacts underway for Lebanese ambassadors’ return to Gulf countries

Regarding the expatriates parliamentary elections’ cost, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, Abdullah Bou Habib, confirmed that “the financial funds are with the Ministry of Interior, and we are cooperating with them on the cost of elections abroad,” noting that “according to the law, the expatriate votes will be sorted in Lebanon, and we will collect them from Countries, and these will cost about a million dollars at least, and we will rent halls abroad, and these will also cost, and we will need people in the countries where the elections will take place, because the number of diplomats is very few.”
He said via a television interview: “I think the Ministry of Interior, and I did not ask the Minister of Interior Bassam Mawlawi, but I think that it has a fund with donations, and from some international organizations abroad,” declaring that “the Ministry of Interior, from now until the end of the year, will announce the cost of elections abroad, and we will see how to secure the money from the Ministry of the Interior.”
Bouhabib revealed that “the decision of the Constitutional Council that will be issued will make us feel comfortable in our work.”In response to a question that the Constitutional Council’s decision to challenge the amendments to the electoral law, whether or not will not affect the holding of the elections, he replied: “this is true.”
Bouhabib stressed, “The resignation of the former Minister of Information, George Kordahi, has nothing to do with the disruption of the Council of Ministers,” declaring that “the collapse of relations with the Gulf countries has stopped,” considering that the ambassadors’ crisis must be resolved next year, stressing that the issue of the return of Lebanon’s ambassadors to the Gulf states, is supposed to take place in the next year, and there are contacts on this issue, and “God willing, it is good.”