KUWAIT CITY (Dispatches) – Kuwait said Sunday that a Lebanese response to a list of suggested measures to ease a diplomatic rift with Persian Gulf Arab countries is currently under review.
Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Ahmed Nasser al-Mohammed Al-Sabah said that receiving the response was a “positive step by the Lebanese authorities”.
He was speaking during a news conference following a meeting of Arab foreign ministers, which was attended by Lebanon’s top diplomat Abdallah Bou Habib.
Ahmed visited Beirut last week and handed Lebanese leaders a list of suggested measures to ease a diplomatic rift with Persian Gulf Arab countries.
In October, Saudi Arabia and its allies suspended diplomatic ties with Lebanon after the airing of comments by then information minister Georges Kordahi criticizing a Saudi-led military aggression on Yemen.
Saudi Arabia severed its relations with Lebanon and started refusing Lebanese imports last year after a Lebanese minister criticized the 2015-present Riyadh-led war on Yemen. Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates followed suit by cutting their diplomatic ties with Beirut.
Kuwait recalled its ambassador from Beirut and also asked Beirut’s charge d’affaires to leave the emirate.
Before the trip, the Lebanese foreign minister said his country would neither give up Hezbollah’s arms nor strive towards ending the resistance group’s presence in Lebanon.
Bou Habib made the remarks to Qatar’s Al Jazeera network as he was about to leave Lebanon for Kuwait to deliver an answer to a list of terms that have been offered by the Persian Gulf’s littoral Arab states for thawing their relations with Beirut.
The Arab states recently sent Kuwait’s foreign minister to the Lebanese capital to present the country with a set of preconditions for mending the ties.
Apparently rejecting demands that had to do with Hezbollah’s defensive and political involvement in Lebanon, Bou Habib insisted, “I am not going [to Kuwait] to hand over Hezbollah’s weapons. I am not going to end Hezbollah’s existence, it is out of the question in Lebanon. We are going for dialog.”
He also vowed that Lebanon would not be “a launchpad for activities that violate Arab countries.”