Lebanon's PM-Designate Steps Down After Months of Deadlock
Voice of America
BEIRUT - Lebanon's Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri stepped down Thursday over what he called "key differences" with the president, deepening a political crisis that has left the Lebanese without a government for nine months even as they endure an unprecedented economic meltdown.
With no clear candidate to replace Hariri, Lebanon is likely to slide deeper into chaos and uncertainty. Prospects for forming a government to undertake desperately needed reforms and talks for a recovery package with the International Monetary Fund are now even more remote. Poverty has soared in the past several months and dire shortages of medicines, fuel and electricity have marked what the World Bank describes as one of the world's worst economic crisis of the past 150 years. "I have excused myself from forming the government," Hariri said after a 20-minute meeting with President Michel Aoun. "May God help the country."Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.