BEIRUT (Dispatches) – The Lebanese
minister whose comments on Yemen sparked a row with Saudi Arabia and its allies and caused an uproar for weeks said he would resign Friday to “give Lebanon a chance”.
“I will resign this afternoon,” Information Minister George Kordahi told AFP. “I do not want to cling to this position, if it can be useful, I want to give Lebanon a chance.”
His resignation has been on the table for weeks and is expected to help unlock a political and diplomatic crisis.
An official at the presidency confirmed to AFP that President Michel Aoun had received a call from Kordahi confirming he would submit his resignation.
The decision coincided with a visit to the Persian Gulf by French President Emmanuel Macron, who has a record of interference in Lebanon’s internal affairs.
Macron started his two-day tour in Abu Dhabi but was also due to visit Qatar, which Michel Aoun also visited recently, and Saudi Arabia.
Kordahi told AFP he hoped his resignation would help break the political deadlock.
“It’s a Saudi demand, and now with Emmanuel Macron’s visit, the time has come,” he said.
A high-ranking official speaking on condition of anonymity said the resignation, which Kordahi had initially ruled out, became inevitable earlier this week when he met Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
“Macron told Mikati before visiting the Persian Gulf: ‘If you want me to talk about Lebanon when I’m there, you’ve got to give me something’,” the official said.
“He didn’t say what but Mikati understood,” the source told AFP.
Kordahi criticized the Saudi-led was on Yemen during an interview which was recorded before he became minister but was aired on Lebanese TV after he joined the cabinet.
During the interview Kordahi called the Saudi-led Yemen war “futile,” and said that Yemeni army forces and their allied fighters from Popular Committees are defending themselves.
His remarks angered Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which responded by recalling their ambassadors from Beirut.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah accused Saudi Arabia of seeking to provoke civil war in Lebanon, saying Riyadh pretends to be friends with the Lebanese people and government while pushing its allies to stand against the popular group in the country.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
Despite heavily-armed Saudi Arabia’s continuous bombardment of the impoverished country, Yemeni armed forces and the Popular Committees have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi-led invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.