Kuwait’s foreign minister Sheikh Ahmad Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah visited Beirut on Saturday, on his first trip since a diplomatic rift last year, delivering a message of confidence-building to Lebanon coordinated with Gulf states, Reuters reported.
Lebanon’s ties with Gulf Arab states were plunged into a deep crisis in October by comments from a former Lebanese minister George Kordahi criticizing Saudi-led forces in Yemen.
In response to Kordahi’s remarks, Kuwait, along with Saudi Arabia, expelled the Lebanese ambassador and recalled its envoy to Beirut.
Kordahi resigned in December.
Following a meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Sheikh Ahmad said the ties with Beirut had not been severed, and they were now in a phase of confidence-building measures.
In the same statement, he said he delivered confidence-building steps to Mikati and the Lebanese foreign minister and urged them to study them and determine how to proceed.
“All the GCC states are sympathetic and in solidarity with the Lebanese people … the Kuwaiti move is a Gulf move,” Sheikh Ahmad said, quoted by Reuters.
Sunni-led Gulf Arab monarchies once spent billions of dollars on Lebanese aid, and they still provide jobs and a haven for Lebanon’s large diaspora.
Sheikh Ahmad said the visit was “to support Lebanon and bring Lebanon out of all that it is going through, to help it overcome these difficulties, and to restore, God willing, the measures to build confidence with Lebanon.”
