Jumblat begins Kuwait visit, urges 'consensual president'

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat met Wednesday in Kuwait with its Prime Minister Sheikh Ahmed Nawaf al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, in the presence of Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Salem Abdullah al-Jaber Al-Sabah.

Jumblat had earlier met with representatives of the Lebanese expat community in Kuwait, stressing that no one in Lebanon “can eliminate the other” and reiterating his call for “dialogue.”

“I’m visiting Kuwait amid a major earthquake in the region, the work of a maestro if I can say, which has certainly been carried out by His Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Gulf, in an attempt to pacify relations and open new horizons between the Arab people and the Iranian people as well as between sects,” Jumblat said.

“He made way for calm instead of wars. Enough with wars in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. That’s why this step is very important,” the PSP leader added.

As for when the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement can affect Lebanon, Jumblat said: “We have to be modest. There is an agenda -- reforms in certain sectors including electricity and banks -- there is a long agenda that is required from us, and a regional breakthrough might come.”

“We begin from the need to elect a president, and no provocative president can be elected by any camp, but rather a consensual president -- not consensual for the sake of consensus but rather consensual for the sake of reform,” Jumblat added.