VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis called on Lebanese politicians on Sunday to urgently elect a new president, to get the country’s governing institutions functioning again.
“I address an urgent invitation to all Lebanese politicians to elect the president of the republic immediately,” the pontiff said at Saint Peter’s Square at the end of Sunday Angelus prayer.
Lebanon’s institutions need to “start functioning normally again to undertake the necessary reforms and sustain the country’s role as an example of peaceful cohabitation between different religions,” Francis said.
Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri has called a presidential election for January 9 in a bid to end a two-year leadership vacuum.
Lebanon has been without a president since Michel Aoun’s term ended in October 2022.
Neither of the two main blocs in parliament — the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its opponents — have the majority required to elect a head of state and they have been unable to agree on a consensus candidate.
Pope Francis urges Lebanon to elect a new president immediately
https://arab.news/w3q22
Pope Francis urges Lebanon to elect a new president immediately
- Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri has called a presidential election for January 9 in a bid to end a two-year leadership vacuum
Take back and prosecute your jailed Daesh militants, Iraq tells Europe
RAQQA: Baghdad on Friday urged European states to repatriate and prosecute their citizens who fought for Daesh, and who are now being moved to Iraq from detention camps in Syria.
Europeans were among 150 Daesh prisoners transferred so far by the US military from Kurdish custody in Syria. They were among an estimated 7,000 militants due to be moved across the border to Iraq as the Kurdish-led force that has held them for years relinquishes swaths of territory to the advancing Syrian army.
In a telephone call on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said European countries should take back and prosecute their nationals.
An Iraqi security official said the 150 so far transferred to Iraq were “all leaders of the Daesh group, and some of the most notorious criminals.” They included “Europeans, Asians, Arabs and Iraqis,” he said.
Another Iraqi security source said the group comprised “85 Iraqis and 65 others of various nationalities, including Europeans, Sudanese, Somalis, and people from the Caucasus region.”
They all took part in Daesh operations in Iraq, he said, and were now being held at a prison in Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that “non-Iraqi terrorists will be in Iraq temporarily.”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces jailed thousands of militant fighters and detained tens of thousands of their relatives in camps as it pushed out Daesh in 2019 after five years of fighting.
