(25 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Beirut – 25 June 2024
1. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock greeted by Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati
2. Baerbock and Mikati shaking hands
3. Wide of Baerbock meeting Mikati
4. Various of meeting
5. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock shaking hands with her Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bouhabib
6. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Abdallah Bouhabib, Lebanese Foreign Minister:
“Germany provided 18 million (U.S.) dollars in aid to refugees in Lebanon and displaced people from the south (of Lebanon), and we thanked them for that. We also discussed the issue of the south (of Lebanon) and the implications of any ceasefire in Gaza on southern Lebanon.”
7. Various of Baerbock meeting Bouhabib
STORYLINE:
Lebanon’s prime minister discussed Tuesday the ongoing war in the Middle East with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and called for an end to the conflict in the Gaza Strip and clashes along the Lebanon-Israel border.
The office of Prime Minister Najib Mikati said he called for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and for a solution based on setting up a Palestinian state during his meeting with the German official.
Mikati also called on the wider international community to work for a solution for the decades-old Middle East conflict.
Baerbock also met with Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib.
"Germany provided 18 million dollars in aid to refugees in Lebanon and displaced people from the south, and we thanked them for that. We also discussed the issue of the south and the implications of any ceasefire in Gaza on southern Lebanon,” Bouhabib said.
Baerbock did not speak to reporters during her visit to Lebanon, which follows a visit to Israel as part of a Middle East tour in which she is pushing again for a cease-fire in Gaza, arguing that it’s also important in view of mounting tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
An Israel-Hezbollah war could be “a catastrophe that goes far beyond the border, and frankly, beyond imagination,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week, amid rising rhetoric and fears of a conflict.
Iran-backed Hezbollah initially seemed caught off-guard by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, a regional ally, but began firing rockets into northern Israel the following day. Since then, Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily cross-border strikes, escalating gradually. Israel also carried out targeted killings of Hezbollah and Hamas figures in Lebanon.
More than 450 people, mostly fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups but also more than 80 civilians and noncombatants, have been killed on Lebanon’s side, and 16 soldiers and 11 civilians on Israel’s.
AP video by Fadi Tawil
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