This is bbc news, the headlines. Joe biden and Kamala Harris have been setting out their vision for the us, in their first joint appearance since he chose her, as his Vice President ial candidate. Mr biden said he had no doubt he had picked the right person. Senator harris said the country is crying out for leadership. In belarus people have come out in the capital minsk for a fourth night of protests against sunday s election result. Clashes erupted hours after bela rusian leader alexander lu kashenko was declared the winner of the vote which the eu has condemned as neither free nor fair. An investigation is under way in scotland after three people died when a passenger train came off the rails on a flooded track in aberdeenshire and caught fire. Scot rail has confirmed they were the driver, the conductor and a passenger. Now on bbc news. Hardtalk. Welcome to hardtalk, im stephen sackur. After the unimaginable horror of the beirut blast, the people of lebanon are now living government, dead in all but name but still in place. My guest today is the minister of economy and trade, raoul nehme. Now he has resigned but hes still in office until new ministers take over. The outgoing Prime Minister says the catastrophic situation is the result of endemic corruption. So is lebanon a country now beyond rescue . Minister raoul nehme in beirut, welcome to hardtalk. Thank you, thank you. Your country is going through an unparalleled crisis, and i have to ask you a very simple question, does lebanon have a government today or not . Lebanon has a caretaker government, which means that the council of ministers cannot meet and take any decisions. There are very few exceptions, basically if there is an emergency, an earthquake and we need to make some decisions, then yes we can do it. Each minister on his own can take only basic decisions, administrative decisions, and not spend money and not engage the government in the long term and so on. It is really only a caretaker government. If i may say so, minister, this is a zombie government. Technically alive but in every real sense, dead. Yes, practically, it is almost a zombie. I wouldnt say zombie but almost because we can still do a lot of things to help, even in this critical situation. For example, this morning i was at a program at the tripoli port to see how we can use tripoli port and bring assistance to bring grain, all types of grain and cattle feed and animal feed and wheat as well using the tripoli port and having some installations there. Yesterday i was examining the beirut port to do the same. The great news is that beirut port Container Terminal will practically be fully operational within a few days. With the crisis in your country is so severe, not just all of the impacts of the terrible explosion but also the covid i9 pandemic putting enormous strain on your healthcare system, the un saying that 50
of your population may very soon be going hungry with 75 reliant on aid. In that context, with every hour so urgent, why did you and all of your colleagues in government choose to resign and walk away . Ok, lets be clear about a few things. Number one even before this terrible blast, the World Bank Estimates were that we were around 50 Poverty Level and that by the end of the year we would reach 60 Poverty Level. Of course, this blast is going to worsen the situation, and covid i9, with this blast again, people have another priorities, to take care of their houses and their wounded and so on. As you say, we have around 6,000 wounded and at this point in time, we are around
160 people dead. Why did we resign, because we found out and confirmed and were absolutely convinced that practically, we were not able any more to operate and operate correctly. In fact, i can give you an example as far as im concerned, in any case, i would have resigned because without the imf, we cannot get out of the mess we are in. And imf is requesting a number of things. They are requesting a consensus between politicians that we dont have. They are requesting capital control and we have been working on it for months now, and it didnt go through, the parties have been blocking it. And so on and so for. But i want to stick with this notion of what on earth is going on at the top of politics in your country. The Prime Minister announcing his resignation talked about the disaster being the result of chronic corruption, corruption he said is greater than the state. Did you agree with him . This blast is really more than just corruption, its criminal, it is a criminal act. These products have been in the port since 2014, in fact, 2013 they were on the boat and then in 2014 they were brought into that warehouse. These very dangerous products. All the managers of the port that are now under house arrest, as well as the ministers of that time, were aware of it and they didnt do anything about it. And this is really a criminalthing. But this is precisely. Yes, yes our country is plagued by corruption. It is plagued by corruption. But minister, this issue gets to the heart of the question of accountability. I noticed you were piling the blame on governments before yours because you and your colleagues formed your government in january 2020. So youre only responsible for the last eight months but already were seeing news reports, for example from reuters, saying that Security Officials in lebanon warned your Prime Minister, mr diab, and the president only last month in july that these 2,700 tons of Ammonium Nitrate were being stored dangerously in the port and could destroy the capital if there was a fire and an explosion. So your government too is culpable. Look, number one if anyone in our government is culpable as you say, we need full transparency. The letter you are referring to, or more precisely the letter from reuters you are referring to, is not very correct unfortunately. This letter contains two sentences. The first sentence is, please be aware that people are not paying their dues. Of course, this is
the most important. And the second sentence says, there is a boat in the port that contains nitrate ammonia, which is a very dangerous and explosive product. It was the second sentence, it was in a boat, not in a warehouse. So it was really imprecise. And one of the letters that i have arrived to the minister of transport and public works on the fourth of august, it sent on the 27th ofjuly, and arrived at his office on the fourth of august just before the blast. I dont have a copy of the letter sent to the president by i understand its exactly the same letter sent at the same time. So i dont think that between the 27th ofjuly and the fifth of august, a lot of things could have been done. But the investigation going on,
and i think this is very important frankly, whoever is guilty, whoever it is, whoever, whoever, of this thing, has to be punished. Crosstalk but the point is the lebanese people want to know that the investigation is truly independent. They want International Observers and participants inside the investigation. Now president aoun has already rejected that. Are you, as minister of economy and trade, saying to your people that you believe there should be an International Element to this investigation and that everybody, however close they are to power, who should be held to account, will be held to account . I say that and i have said it repeatedly in the council of ministers. But you have to know that there is already, there are already specialists, internationals specialists on the ground assisting in the investigation. What some people have some reservations about is to
have an International Court like the one that has been going on since 2006 about the assassination of president hariri which has cost millions of dollars and were still waiting for the verdict. We have to know as lebanese, i am one of the lebanese people, we need to know what happened. We need to know if yes or no there was anything else other than that nitrate ammonium in the warehouse. People are saying it is a blast coming from a missile from israel. We need to know if that is true or not. Other people are saying it contained weapons from hezbollah. We need to know whether that is right or not. Whatever happens, we need to know and whatever means we need to have in order to know what happens and what was in that warehouse, we need to know it. So isnt it time at this moment of deepest crisis in lebanon to be honest about the complete dysfunction of your system. Is not the truth that those names were now familiar with in lebanon, like hassan nasrallah, the leader of hezbollah, michel aoun the leader of one christian sect, nabih berri, one of the sunni leaders, walid jumblatt, the druze leader. These guys have all been around for so very long and they, with their fiefdoms and their clientalism are the real power in lebanon, not ministers like yourself. Isnt that the truth . This is part of the reason why we resigned because we are a government of technocrats and we were supposed to take decisions that were technocratic and we were not be able to do it. So you were powerless . We had walls, every time we had something important, we were hitting walls. I will give you an example, again, on the capital control. Capital control was presented
by the minister of finance and then removed from the agenda by the same minister of finance at the request of his party. So, basically, yes, the political system in lebanon has to change entirely and in order to change entirely, we have to change this taif accord. This taif accord is very bad for the country. We need to entirely change the political system. Crosstalk the way it is working. It cannot be fixed, it has to change. People will not be familiar with the taif accord but that was the 1990 agreement which obviously brought the sectarian civil war to an end and gave communal sectarian patronage powers to the leaders ivejust mentioned. Yes. How on earth is lebanon going to move away from that system when there are so many vested interests who make a great deal of money from maintaining the system . By the reforms that we have to do, for example with banking secrecy. You were asking me about all these politicians. I hate to say that this politician or that politician is corrupt without having proof. In order to have proof, we have to have a waiver of banking secrecy in lebanon and outside of lebanon because if any politician is getting money, kickbacks or so on, he is not necessarily going to get them in lebanon. Waving the banking secrecy is the first thing to do in order to know who stole the money of the people in lebanon. And this is what were trying to do. Crosstalk let me stop you. 0nly people on the street now by doing what is necessary but not in violence, not in violence. In 2005, we got the syrians out without shedding blood. Millions of lebanese went into the streets and the syrian army went out of lebanon. So this is the solution. Minister, there is proof, for example, im sure you know him well, alain bifani, the director general who resigned of the public finances a few weeks ago, saying that he knew that bankers had smuggled six billion dollars or more out of lebanon since october, getting around the capital flight controls that were imposed. If he knows that, you presumably know it too because you used to be a banker. I was a banker at that time but what is very unfortunate is that there was no capital control. So the law didnt forbid anyone to transfer money outside, so anyone could transfer money outside. It was a self control where the banks were left out in the blue trying to manage the little liquidities they had outside of lebanon. 0k, alain says, this is the number and i dont have precise numbers personally but i can tell you what is unfortunate is that if we have capital control, this would not have happened. There will be lebanese people watching this saying, here we go, yet another government minister who is blaming others rather than taking responsibility himself. In the spirit of asking you a direct question i take full responsibility. I always took full responsibility for everything i did. And i take full responsibility. In the spirit of transparency and full disclosure, you say you want much tighter financial controls, the people have taken money out of lebanon, billions of dollars. Let me ask you as a former banker, part of the Financial System you are supporting yourself, how much money have you taken out of lebanon . We have taken out a lot of money outside of lebanon because in september, not october, in september at the end of september, and these statistics are available in public information, banks had outside
of lebanon 9. 8 billion. But i am talking about you yourself and your family. Crosstalk im arriving to it, you have to have a full picture. 9. 9 billion outside of lebanon, and they owed over 9. 8 billion so the net amount of money that the Banking System had outside of lebanon was 100 150 million. So, basically the whole Banking System in lebanon didnt have money what was in due outside of lebanon. And we did pay our dues, we have to pay our dues. We have commitments with our international. But, minister, answer my direct question. You and your family, how much money have you taken out of lebanon . Me . Zero. Zero . Zero. In fact, no, around 20,000. So you say you do not
want to cast aspersions on others but we know for example, the Waste Management system has been run by cronies of the political elite and they have taken millions and millions of dollars out of that system for themselves, the same goes for electricity. The bank i was in, we did not transfer any money for any politician. But you know the people who are taking money out of the rubbish, garbage, Waste Management system. You know people who have made millions and millions of dollars out of the Energy Sector and its so dysfunctional in your country, why wont you name names . I cannot name names if i am not sure. Whenever i am sure of a name, i will give it to you. The imf wants to work with lebanon. Yes. They know that lebanons public finances are completely collapsing. Completely. You defaulted on loans in march i believe. Correct. You have 90 billion of state debts which simply are unpayable in the current circumstances. Correct. But the imf says it does not see any real commitment to structural fundamental reform. When is it going to come . It has to come and it has to come very quickly. Let me tell you again my part. My part, i have to do a number of things as minister of economy for the imf. Number one, i have to do the competition law. The competition law im working on it with the world bank and it is about two weeks from being completed. I will still, even as a caretaker, i continue preparing and putting on the desk for the next minister. I have to do a Consumer Protection law. It is completed and i wanted to send it to the next council of minister. It is on my desk and unfortunately now i cannot do
it anymore and i will give it to the next minister. I am working on the ip, the intellectual property law conventions that we have to sign in order to protect intellectual property. One of them is already at the council of ministers and on the agenda and another three are being printed to be put on my desk to go to the council of ministers. Minister, unfortunately, hang on. Unfortunately, i think, when these are approved to go to parliament, they will not be accepted because for example, in the competition law, i want to remove the exclusive agencies, and the same people in the parliament have friends and have exclusive agencies representation for products and so it will not be easy for them to vote these type of laws. That is an understatement because you have explained to me that you have a zombie
government, the council of ministers cannot properly function and, beyond that, you have no sign that a new government is coming down the track. There is no sign of a leader who is capable of moving beyond the current, utterly dysfunctional corrupt system and pushing through fundamental reform. Where is that new leader . In fact, i have to agree with what you say. I do not see that leader because it looks like what i am hearing, we willjust do and get the same back and i dont know what will happen. We are a caretaker government. I hope we will not be for a very long time a caretaker government because the country needs a real government to move on and resolve the crisis. If not, it is really catastrophic. We cannot wait indefinitely. We do not have enough resources, dollars, hard dollars, to continue importing goods. We need to have a government yesterday before tomorrow
and we need that government to do the reforms. This is why, even during my caretaker, im still working on preparing whatever reforms need to be done by my ministry in order to get them ready to be sent to the council of ministers, to the next minister coming on board. Let me end, minister, if i may, by giving you some bleak words from a a man who used to do yourjob, former economy minister nasa saidi. Im sure you know him well. I know him very well. He basically said that we have a corrupt political class, subservient policymakers, cronies who generated unprecedented misery, economic meltdown, the endemic corruption, negligence and imcompetence here have delivered the horses of the apocalypse on lebanon. Is that the way you see it . Is lebanon heading towards apocalypse . For 30 years, the governments have mismanaged just about everything, the resources
of lebanon, the budget, the balance of payment, the economy, and so on, and this is what has taken us to where we. Frankly, with 90 billion debt and the loss in the range of 85 billion and now probably more after what happened, i dont think this is called good management. Any companies that would have been in that situation, i think, the shareholders should put the managers in prison. Yes, what mr saidi is saying is correct and i hope that we will not have the same coming back, the same people coming back but it looks like we will have a government again with the same people, doing the same thing. Could talking of apocalypse, could lebanon fall apart because we know. Yes, yes president macron has been very clear and the International Community has been clear. Yes, lebanon can collapse. If we dont do what we have to do, which is, you know, i remember when i started banking in 2002, i started getting more into the finance of the country and before that i was a businessman in lebanon and in the us and then in france. Paris one, we ask for a few billions of dollars and got commitments, and we got the dollars and did not do the commitments. Paris two, paris three, same, and then more leaders came and then they said this time, we will do it. Saidi came and then they said they would do the reform and get the money and then that did not happen and now saidi came and then they said they would do the reform and get the money and then that did not happen and now
they are saying i have to get the imf and if you do not, you do not get one diem. This is the right approach to organisations in lebanon. We have to get imf and we have to get it quickly. We have lost already a lot of time. And if you do not, it could be the end of your country . Economically, yes. Socially, it will be catastrophic, people will go into hunger and so on. Yes, we have to have it, and we have to have it very quickly. People, politicians have to understand that. They have two stop thinking the way they are thinking before, acting the way they were acting before. Again, if our government is responsible, if i am responsible, we have to be taken to court and judged. Minister, raoul nehme, thank you very much indeed forjoining me from beirut. Thank you. Hello. Wednesday brought a real mishmash of weather across the British Isles, a lot of heat and humidity again and yet, in the saint ives and a number of coastal areas were plagued with low cloud and fog and then, as the day wore on, so the thunderstorms popped off and that prospect is there again through thursday, hot and humid weather with that risk of thunderstorms, especially so, although not exclusively across the southern half of the British Isles because this overall set up of the low pressure with the heat from the continent and the moisture from the surrounding seas is still the dominant feature. And we start with the temperature somewhere in the teens for many, if not twenty degrees in one or two spots in the southeast and from the word go, there could well be some thunderstorms for central and southern parts of england getting across the border into wales. Quite a bit of mirk there to the eastern side of the penines, effecting some of the east and Northern Counties of scotland. Best of the sunshine out west. Later on, pushing the temperatures 22 similar sort of prospect in parts of Northern Ireland and somewhere again and central and southern parts of england will be pushing close to 30 degrees and the thunderstorms continue apace. There are warnings from the met office already about the potential for disruption from those storms. In fact, that continues right on into friday as well and another mirky, muggy night to come, widely across the British Isles. Friday, a really cloudy start with a shield of cloud coming in from the north sea to affect many areas only beginning to break as we get on into the afternoon. And still that prospect, particularly across southern britain of some really quite sharp thunderstorms. Temperatures beginning to fall back in touch but it will still feel very close, very oprpressive, simply because that overall situation really not changing, even as you move towards the weekend. Southern britain still at risk from these thunderstorms. Further north, it should be dry, thanks to the influence of the high pressure. But again, some of these northern and eastern facing coast could well be affected by some low level mistand mirk, which will temper the feel of the day. But with some sunshine in the north youll be looking at 22, possibly 23 degrees. And we dont really change things even as we push right through the weekend and into the start of the forthcoming week. Take care, bye bye
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