Tehran: Iran’s president on Monday ruled out negotiations with Washington until it acts “normal,” after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US is ready to talk to Tehran without preconditions.
“The party that has left the negotiating table, the party that has trampled the pact must return to a normal” behavior, Hassan Rouhani said in a televised speech.
“If the enemy truly realizes that the path it took was wrong, that will be the day to sit at the negotiation table and fix any issue,” the president added.
Tensions have spiked in recent weeks between Tehran and Washington, which last year pulled out of a landmark Iran nuclear accord and imposed tough sanctions on the Islamic republic.
But Washington’s top diplomat appeared to soften the US stance on Sunday, saying “we are prepared to engage in a conversation with no preconditions.”
Washington is “certainly prepared to have (a) conversation when the Iranians will prove they are behaving as a normal nation,” Pompeo said in Switzerland, which represents Washington’s interests in Iran in the absence of bilateral relations.
Pompeo however gave no indication that lifting sanctions would be on the table.
On Saturday, Rouhani insisted that Iran would not be “bullied” into talks with the United States, saying “total respect” was needed for negotiations to take place.
Iran president rules out talks until US acts ‘normal’
Iran president rules out talks until US acts ‘normal’
- Iranian president said the day US realizes their mistake is the day they will sit for talks
- Rouhani earlier said Iran will not be “bullied” into talks with US
Lebanon PM says IMF wants rescue plan changes as crisis deepens
- “We want to engage with the IMF. We want to improve. This is a draft law,” Salam said
- “They wanted the hierarchy of claims to be clearer. The talks are all positive”
DAVOS, Switzerland: The International Monetary Fund has demanded amendments to a draft rescue law aimed at hauling Lebanon out of its worst financial crisis on record and giving depositors access to savings frozen for six years, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said.
The “financial gap” law is part of a series of reform measures required by the IMF in order to access its funding and aims to allocate the losses from Lebanon’s 2019 crash between the state, the central bank, commercial banks and depositors.
Salam told Reuters the IMF wants clearer provisions in the hierarchy of claims, which is a core element of the draft legislation designed to determine how losses are allocated.
“We want to engage with the IMF. We want to improve. This is a draft law,” Salam said in an interview at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.
“They wanted the hierarchy of claims to be clearer. The talks are all positive,” Salam added.
In 2022, the government put losses from the financial crisis at about $70 billion, a figure that analysts and economists forecast is now likely to be higher.
Salam stressed that Lebanon is still pushing for a long-delayed IMF program, but warned the clock is ticking as the country has already been placed on a financial ‘grey list’ and risks falling onto the ‘blacklist’ if reforms stall further.
“We want an IMF program and we want to continue our discussions until we get there,” he said, adding: “International pressure is real ... The longer we delay, the more people’s money will evaporate.”
The draft law, which was passed by Salam’s government in December, is under parliamentary review. It aims to give depositors a guaranteed path to recovering their funds, restart bank lending, and end a financial crisis that has left nearly a million accounts frozen and confidence in the system shattered.
The roadmap would repay depositors up to $100,000 over four years, starting with smaller accounts, while launching forensic audits to determine losses and responsibility.
Lebanon’s Finance Minister Yassine Jaber, who is driving the reform push with Salam, told Reuters it was essential to salvage a hollowed-out banking system, and to stop the country from sliding deeper into its cash-only, paralyzed economy.
The aim, Jaber said, is to give depositors clarity after years of uncertainty and to end a system that has crippled Lebanon’s international standing.
He framed the law as part of a broader reckoning: the first time a Lebanese government has confronted a combined collapse of the banking sector, the central bank and the state treasury.
Financial reforms have been repeatedly derailed by political and private vested interests over the last six years and Jaber said the responsibility now lies with lawmakers.
Failure to act, he said, would leave Lebanon trapped in “a deep, dark tunnel” with no way back to a functioning system.
“Lebanon has become a cash economy, and the real question is whether we want to stay on the grey list, or sleepwalk into a blacklist,” Jaber added.
