Salam vows to 'rescue, reform and rebuild' crisis and war-hit Lebanon

Lebanon's new prime minister pledged Tuesday to extend state authority over all Lebanese soil after a November ceasefire ended a war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Nawaf Salam, in his first speech, said he would "extend the authority of the Lebanese state across all its territory" and "work seriously to completely implement U.N. resolution 1701" calling for Hezbollah to withdraw from south Lebanon.

Hezbollah and its ally Amal did not back Salam's nomination and Hezbollah described his appointment Monday as "an ambush" aimed at "disintegration, partitioning, elimination and exclusion."

Salam vowed to unite the Lebanese and to reach out to all sides across the political spectrum to help "rescue, reform and rebuild" his crisis-hit country.

"I'm not an advocate of exclusion but rather unity and my hands are extended to everyone so that no citizen feels marginalized," Salam said after a meeting in Baabda with President Joseph Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri.

Salam vowed to work on building a modern state, saying his priorities will be to rebuild the destruction caused by the yearlong war with Israel and work on pulling the small nation out of its historic economic meltdown.

He added that he'll work to achieve justice for the port blast victims and fairness for depositors who lost their money during the unprecedented economic crisis.

Decades of corruption and political paralysis have left Lebanon’s banks barely functional, while electricity services are almost entirely in the hands of private diesel-run generator owners and fuel suppliers. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic further battered the economy, and the Beirut port explosion, one of the largest non-nuclear blasts ever recorded, badly damaged several neighborhoods in the heart of the capital.

Salam said he will work on putting a program to build a modern economy that would help the country of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, out of its economic crisis that exploded into protests in October 2019.

Since the economic crisis began, successive governments have done little to implement reforms demanded by the international community that would lead to the release of billions of dollars of investments and loans by foreign donors.

"Both my hands are extended to all of you so that we all move forward in the mission of salvation, reforms and reconstruction," Salam said.

"The time has come to say, enough. Now is the time to start a new chapter," Salam said, adding that people in Lebanon have suffered badly because of "the latest brutal Israeli aggression on Lebanon and because of the worst economic crisis and financial policies that made the Lebanese poor."

Neither Salam nor Aoun, an army commander who was elected president last week, is considered part of the political class that ruled the country after the end of the 1975-90 civil war.