U.S. Reportedly Promises Aoun $1 Billion in Yearly Aid

Washington has promised President Michel Aoun to offer Lebanon annual aid worth $1 billion, of which $500 million would go to the Lebanese Army and the rest would be earmarked for government plans, a media report published Sunday said.

The U.S. move is aimed at “guaranteeing political and economic stability,” Kuwait’s al-Anbaa newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying.

But Washington and other world powers want Lebanon’s main political forces, especially the president and the premier, to abide by certain conditions, including “a centrist policy that reflects some neutrality towards the major problems” surrounding Lebanon and preventing the use of Lebanon’s financial system for “money laundering,” the sources added.

The political parties in Lebanon have “promised to respect these conditions and the rules of the new game, whose balances are different that the ones that governed the previous period,” the sources said.