BEIRUT: Lebanon named its envoy to Germany, Mustapha Adib, as the new premier Monday to steer the country through a deep crisis after the Beirut explosion compounded a sharp economic downturn.
The presidency made the announcement in a televised statement as Adib arrived at the palace in Baabda near Beirut to meet President Michel Aoun and parliament speaker Nabih Berri.
Adib said hopes to implement major reforms after quickly forming a government.
He called for the immediate implementation of reforms as an entry point for an agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
“The opportunity for our country is small,” Adib said after he was formally designated by Aoun.
The 48-year-old was born in the northern city of Tripoli and is a Sunni Muslim, making him eligible to become prime minister under Lebanon’s sectarian-based power-sharing system.
His biography on the Berlin embassy website presents him as an academic who holds a PhD in political science.
It says he has conducted “research and expert work in the areas of both human and state security, parliamentary oversight of the security sector, decentralization and local democracy, and electoral laws.”
From 2000 to 2004, he served as an adviser to Najib Mikati, a billionaire and former prime minister who backed his nomination on Monday.
In 2011, then-prime minister Mikati appointed Adib as his chief of cabinet.
