Nawaf Salam: ICJ president named Lebanon's new prime minister
2025-01-14
Category: news

Nawaf Salam, the president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, has been named as Lebanon's new prime minister.Two thirds of the 128 members of parliament nominated the 71-year-old judge for the post - reserved for a Sunni Muslim under a sectarian power sharing system - during consultations with newly elected President Joseph Aoun. Caretaker PM Najib Mikati got nine votes.The presidency said Salam would return to Lebanon on Tuesday.His appointment is another blow to Hezbollah, which had sought to reappoint Mikati but ended up nominating no candidate. The Iran-backed Shia Muslim militia and political party has been significantly weakened by its recent war with Israel.
Senior Hezbollah lawmaker Mohammed Raad accused its opponents of working for fragmentation and exclusion.He complained that his group had "extended its hand" by supporting Aoun's election only to find the "hand cut", and warned that "any government at odds with coexistence has no legitimacy whatsoever".However, Christian and Sunni allies of Hezbollah did back Salam.Gebran Bassil, the leader of Lebanon's biggest Maronite Christian bloc, called him the "face of reform". Sunni lawmaker Faisal Karami meanwhile said he had nominated the ICJ chief due to the demands for "change and renewal" as well as promises of international support for Lebanon.Salam is a member of a prominent Sunni family from Beirut. His uncle, Salam, helped Lebanon gain independence from France in 1943 and served several terms as prime minister. His cousin, Tammam, was also prime minister from 2014 to 2016.He holds a doctorate in political science from Sciences Po university in France, a doctorate in history from the Sorbonne and a Master of Law degree from Harvard Law School.Salam worked as a lawyer and a lecturer at several universities before serving as Lebanon's permanent representative to the United Nations in New York from 2007 to 2017.He became a member of the ICJ - the UN's top court - in 2018, and was elected president for a three-year term last February. He took over as the ICJ heard a case brought by South Africa that accused Israeli forces of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel dismissed the allegation as baseless.
Now that he has been designated prime minister by President Aoun, Salam must agree a cabinet line-up that can win a confidence vote in Lebanon's deeply-divided parliament.Former Lebanese army chief Aoun's candidacy for the presidency - a role reserved for a Maronite Christian - was backed by many key political parties in parliament as well as the United States, France and Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah and its ally, Amal, voted for him in the second round of last Thursday's presidential election following the withdrawal of their preferred candidate.After the election, Aoun declared that "a new phase in Lebanon's history" had begun and vowed to work to ensure that the Lebanese state had "the exclusive right to bear arms" - a reference to Hezbollah, which had built a force considered more powerful than the army to resist Israel before their 13-month conflict in violation of a UN Security Council resolution.The army was not involved in the war and has a key role under the ceasefire deal agreed between the Lebanese and Israeli governments at the end of November. It is required to deploy soldiers in southern Lebanon as Israeli troops withdraw and to ensure Hezbollah ends its armed presence there by 26 January.Aoun also promised to help the new government push through the political and economic reforms widely seen as necessary in a country that has been affected by multiple crises.Besides the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, they include a six-year-long economic depression that is one of the worst recorded in modern times, and the 2020 Beirut port explosion that killed more than 200 people.