U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea has met with World Food Program Deputy Country Director Nicolas Oberlin and others to learn more about the World Food Program’s ongoing efforts to address the deteriorating food security situation in Lebanon, the U.S. Embassy said on Friday.

The European Union on Friday called on Lebanese politicians to urgently form a new Cabinet, hours after Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri announced his resignation.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said Lebanese leaders are responsible for solving "the current domestic, self-made crisis," adding that it is urgent to form a new cabinet quickly.

Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan said Friday the government would scrap subsidies on medicines costing less than 12,000 Lebanese pounds to shore up foreign currency reserves.

Hassan affirmed that the list of subsidized medicines includes medicines for chronic diseases, children’s formula milk, vaccines, as well as medicines to treat psychiatric and neurological diseases.

President Michel Aoun stressed Friday that Lebanon “will manage to overcome the difficult circumstances,” only hours after PM-designate Saad Hariri stepped down, a move that deepened the major uncertainty that crisis-hit Lebanon is going through at all levels.

“Lebanon will manage to overcome the difficult circumstances that it is currently going through at all levels, because events have proved that the will to life of the Lebanese have always enabled them to defeat various difficulties,” Aoun said, during a Baabda meeting with a delegation from the NDU university.

In the wake of PM-designate Saad Hariri’s resignation, preparations kicked off at the presidential palace to set a date for the binding parliamentary consultations to name a new premier, media report said on Friday.

“The consultations vigorously began overnight in order to set an urgent date for holding the consultations and naming the new premier who will be tasked with the formation mission,” sources close to Baabda told al-Joumhouria newspaper.

Baabda sources have described PM-designate Saad Hariri’s resignation as a “total coup against the agreement sponsored by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the endeavor led by Speaker Nabih Berri.”

In remarks to al-Akhbar newspaper published Friday, the sources decried “a coup against the agreement’s format, equations, balances and names.”

Al-Jadeed television, which held a lengthy interview with resigned PM-designate Saad Hariri overnight, has published the line-up that the PM-designate submitted to President Michel Aoun prior to his resignation.

Below is the draft line-up presented by Hariri:

Lebanon will steer deeper into abyss after the exit of premier-designate Saad Hariri, and as France prepares to host an aid conference on the first anniversary of the country's port blast.

The United States said Thursday's resignation of Saad Hariri as Lebanon's prime minister-designate was disappointing.

"It is critical that a government committed and able to implement priority reforms be formed now," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after Hariri abandoned his efforts to form a government nine months after accepting the challenge.

French President Emmanuel Macron will host a new international conference on Lebanon next month on the first anniversary of the Beirut port explosion, after premier designate Saad Hariri gave up trying to form a government, the foreign ministry announced Friday.