Visiting U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, David Hale, met President Michel Aoun in Baabda on Thursday after which he told reporters that Hizbullah’s Iran-financed illegal activities prevent the establishment of a peaceful state in Lebanon, and urged for a quick formation of a government.

The U.S. embassy in Beirut released Hale’s statement from Baabda:

In the annual risk assessment report for 2021 prepared by the US intelligence services, it said that “Hizbullah” may attack the US interests in the region, Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported on Thursday.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri arrived Wednesday evening in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other officials.

Hariri received an official welcome at Moscow’s airport, where he was met by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Presidential Special Envoy for the Middle East and Africa Mikhail Bogdanov, the Russian government’s head of protocol, Lebanese Ambassador to Russia Shawki Abu Nassar and Hariri’s special envoy to Russia, George Shaaban.

MP Georges Adwan of the Lebanese Forces on Wednesday called for an emergency cabinet session to approve the amendment of Decree 6433, which expands the sea border area disputed with Israel.

“When we see the professionalism, technique and seriousness in which the Army Command and its chief and officers worked, and the follow-up by the defense minister, we realize that we have an army in which we can pride ourselves,” Adwan said at a press conference in parliament.

The lead investigative judge into the Beirut port blast, Tarek al-Bitar, continued his investigations on Wednesday by issuing domestic and foreign judicial writs, the National News Agency said.

NNA said the foreign writs were sent to Georgia, Mozambique, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey – countries that were “directly or indirectly involved in the course of the ammonium nitrate shipment that reached the port” in 2013 and caused the catastrophic 2020 explosion – one of the strongest non-nuclear blasts in history.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs David Hale stressed on Wednesday that the United States and the international community are ready to help Lebanon but not without a “Lebanese partner.”

President Michel Aoun discussed Lebanon’s bilateral relations with the United Kingdom with visiting UK Chief of Defence Staff’s Senior Advisor to the Middle East and North Africa (DSAME), Air Marshal Martin Sampson, the National News Agency reported on Wednesday.

MP Michel Moussa of Amal Movement's Development and Liberation bloc on Wednesday assured that Speaker Nabih Berri’s initiative to ease the government formation deadlock “is still on the table.”

The UK Chief of Defence Staff’s Senior Advisor to the Middle East and North Africa (DSAME), Air Marshal Martin Sampson, begins his visit to Lebanon with meeting President Michel Aoun on Wednesday in a show of Britain’s “continued support” for the crisis-hit nation, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Wednesday.

Eight months after a massive blast ripped through Beirut port and nearby districts of the Lebanese capital, a host of foreign companies with different national interests are competing to rebuild it.