BEIRUT: Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin on Wednesday urged warring parties in the Middle East to accept “peace proposals,” saying the region including Lebanon “doesn’t need war.”
“The Middle East is going through a critical moment,” Parolin told a press conference in Beirut during a days-long visit to Lebanon.
The Holy See “asks for peace proposals to be welcomed, so that fighting stops on each side, so hostages in Gaza are released, so that the necessary aid arrives unhindered to the Palestinian population,” he said.
“Lebanon, the Middle East, the whole world certainly doesn’t need war,” the cardinal added.
The bloodiest ever Gaza war started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 42 are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,718 people, also mostly civilians, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory says.
US President Joe Biden on May 31 laid out a plan for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages, but the conflict has continued to rage, with fears growing of a wider regional war drawing in Lebanese Hamas ally Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Wednesday urged against linking “Lebanon’s stability and interests to extremely complicated conflicts and never-ending wars.”
Israel and Hezbollah have traded near-daily cross-border fire since Hamas’s October 7 attack.
The violence has killed more than 480 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters but also including 94 civilians, according to an AFP tally, with 15 soldiers and 11 civilians dead in Israel, according to authorities.
During his visit, Parolin has met political and religious leaders, and said on Wednesday the Vatican was “seriously concerned” at Lebanon’s presidential vacuum.
Electing a head of state is “an urgent and absolute necessity,” he said, expressing the hope “that the political parties will be able find a solution without delay.”
Lebanon, long divided on sectarian lines, has been without a president since the end of October 2022.
Neither of parliament’s two main blocs — Hezbollah and its opponents — have the majority required to elect one, and successive votes have ended in deadlock.
From Beirut, Vatican urges Middle East parties to accept peace plans
https://arab.news/jju43
From Beirut, Vatican urges Middle East parties to accept peace plans
- “Lebanon, the Middle East, the whole world certainly doesn’t need war,” the cardinal said
- During his visit, Parolin has met political and religious leaders, and said on Wednesday the Vatican was “seriously concerned” at Lebanon’s presidential vacuum
Trump warns US to end support for Iraq if Al-Maliki returns
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to end all US support for Iraq if Nouri Al-Maliki, a former prime minister with ties to Iran, returns to the post.
Trump, in his latest blatant intervention in another country’s politics, said that Iraq would make a “very bad choice” with Maliki, who has been nominated as prime minister by the largest Shiite bloc.
“Last time Al-Maliki was in power, the Country descended into poverty and total chaos. That should not be allowed to happen again,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“Because of his insane policies and ideologies, if elected, the United States of America will no longer help Iraq,” he said.
“If we are not there to help, Iraq has ZERO chance of Success, Prosperity, or Freedom. MAKE IRAQ GREAT AGAIN!” he wrote, adopting his slogan at home.
Maliki left power in 2014 following pressure from the United States, which blamed his nakedly sectarian Shiite agenda for giving rise to the Daesh group of ultra-violent Sunni extremists.
The United States wields key leverage over Iraq as its oil export revenue is largely held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, in an arrangement reached after the 2003 US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Oil sales account for around 90 percent of Iraqi government revenues.
Trump’s statement came days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio voiced similar concerns in a telephone call with the incumbent prime minister, Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani. The United States had also sent a letter to Iraqi politicians saying that Washington views Al-Maliki negatively, political sources said.
Delay in parliament
By convention, a Shiite Muslim has been prime minister since the fall of Saddam, who ruthlessly repressed the Shiite majority in Iraq.
On Saturday, the Coordination Framework, an alliance of Shiite parties with varying ties to Iran that holds a parliamentary majority, endorsed Maliki.
Normally he would then be nominated by the president, who holds a largely ceremonial role.
Iraq’s parliament was set to elect a president on Tuesday but the vote was abruptly delayed.
The presidency traditionally goes to a Kurd, and the official INA press agency said that the two main Kurdish parties had requested more time to come to a consensus on a candidate.
Before Trump’s open call to dump Maliki, an Iraqi political source said that the Coordination Framework was set on moving forward with the nomination, believing that Al-Maliki could eventually allay Washington’s concerns.
A pro-Iranian government in Iraq would be a rare boon for Tehran’s Shiite clerical state after it suffered major setbacks at home and in the region.
The Islamic republic has killed thousands of Iranians since mass protests erupted in late December in one of the largest threats to the clerics’ rule since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Since suffering the October 7, 2023 attacks, Israel has hit Iran both with strikes inside the country and heavy blows against Tehran’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah, while Iran lost its main Arab ally with the fall of Bashar Assad in Syria.
The United States has enjoyed smooth relations with Sudani, who has worked quietly to prevent violence by Iraqi Shiite armed groups tied to Iran.
Sudani has also cooperated with the United States to bring into Iraq a caravan of Islamic State prisoners from Syria, where the army recently moved on Kurdish fighters who had run the detention camps.
Even during Sudani’s term, Al-Maliki annoyed the then US administration of Joe Biden by helping push through a harsh anti-LGBTQ law.
The United States has long intervened in other countries, but Trump has broken precedent by meddling openly.
Trump has backed fellow right-wing candidates in elections in Poland, Romania and Honduras, where the Trump-backed winner was inaugurated Tuesday.
Trump earlier this month ordered a deadly military operation into Venezuela that removed leftist president Nicolas Maduro, a longtime US nemesis.
