Embattled Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh has reiterated that he intends to appeal an Interpol notice issued for him after he failed to show up in Paris earlier this week for questioning in a key corruption case.

Arab nations on Friday expressed their “solidarity with Lebanon” in the closing statement of the 32nd Arab Summit that was held in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

The “presidential vacuum” and the “failure to elect a new president” have “aggravated” Lebanon’s crisis, caretaker PM Najib Mikati told the 32nd Arab Summit in Jeddah on Friday.

June 6 will be a “serious and strongly likely” date for holding a presidential election session, informed sources said.

“Despite the Shiite Duo’s clinging to Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh’s nomination, there are efforts to agree on a candidate who would not be loyal to the ruling camp or the opposition camp,” the sources told al-Liwaa newspaper in remarks published Friday.

Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh has sought to “benefit from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s participation” in Jeddah’s Arab Summit by asking him to discuss his presidential nomination with the kingdom’s leadership, a media report said on Friday.

Franjieh made the request in talks with Assad’s powerful brother Maher, who told him to talk to Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah seeing as “the file is in his hands,” Lebanon’s Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati held a meeting Friday in Jeddah with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, on the sidelines of the 32nd Arab Summit that will kick off later in the day.

During the meeting, al-Sisi stressed his “continuous support for Lebanon and for the revival process in it,” expressing hope that a new president will be elected as soon as possible, Lebanon’s National News Agency said.

Lebanon on Friday received an Interpol notice for the country's embattled central bank governor who failed to show up in Paris earlier in the week for questioning in a key corruption case, Caretaker interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said Friday.

A French investigative judge Tuesday issued an international arrest warrant for Salameh after he didn’t show up for questioning.

The closing statement of the 32nd Arab Summit that will be held Friday in Jeddah will laud “the efforts that Lebanon has exerted to properly host the displaced Syrians,” al-Jadeed TV quoted a leaked closing statement as saying.

The statement will also “welcome the Arab stances that are in line with Lebanon’s stance, which calls for intensifying and expediting the efforts of returning the displaced Syrians to their country after the circumstances became more appropriate for their return.”

The Free Patriotic Movement might resort to the choice of casting blank votes should there be an imminent call for a presidential election session, MP Alain Aoun said.

Such a choice would mean that the FPM is “not siding with any candidate,” Aoun told Radio All of Lebanon.

Lebanon's caretaker deputy prime minister Saade Chami, who is heading talks with the International Monetary Fund to bail out Lebanon's tanking economy, has called for the country's embattled central bank chief to resign, amid allegations of corruption and an international arrest warrant issued against him.

Once seen as the guardian of Lebanon's financial stability, Central Bank Gov. Riad Salameh is now widely blamed for an economic meltdown that began in 2019. The Lebanese pound has since plummeted in value and wiped out much of the savings of ordinary Lebanese, plunging an estimated three-quarters of the population into poverty.