French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that "his country will continue to mobilize the international community to respond to the urgent Lebanese needs," and that Paris will continue to support what he described as live forces in Lebanon.
At a conference in front of the Elysee Palace in Paris, after his meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Macron stressed the importance of taking the necessary reform measures to restore Lebanon's health, stressing that the international community will not help Lebanon before implementing the required reforms.
The French president stressed that his country will continue to support Lebanon, adding, "Lebanon can count on France."
Macron also renewed France's support to continue investigations into the Beirut port explosion.
For his part, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said, "I assured President Macron of my determination to implement the necessary and basic reforms as soon as possible, in cooperation with the government and with the support of President Michel Aoun and Parliament, to restore confidence, spread a new breath of hope and alleviate the suffering of the Lebanese people."
He added that these measures will be decisive in reviving the economy, in pursuing promising negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, and beginning to end the crisis.
"I affirmed to President Macron the government's determination to hold the parliamentary elections next spring, which will allow the renewal of the political life that the Lebanese people, who are suffering at all levels, yearn for," he added.
Mikati's visit to Paris is his first foreign trip since the formation of the Lebanese government on the tenth of this month, and it obtained the confidence of the House of Representatives last Monday.
The two sides discussed bilateral relations, the economic program of the Mikati government, and the reforms it intends to implement to get Lebanon out of the economic crisis that it has been witnessing for more than two years.
For more than a year and a half, Lebanon has been suffering from a severe economic crisis that has caused a deterioration in the value of the local currency against the dollar, and a sharp decrease in foreign currency reserves with the Central Bank.