French FM said set to meet Hezbollah officials in Lebanon

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault will reportedly meet with a political delegation of Hezbollah, whose military wing has been designated a terror group by the European Union, in Lebanon on Tuesday.

The Lebanese news site al-Joumhouria quoted “well-informed” sources who said the delegation would include lawmaker Ali Fayyad, from Hezbollah’s political party Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc, as well as the head of Hezbollah’s international relations, Ammar al-Musawi.

Ayrault arrived in Lebanon Tuesday for a two-day trip in order to help the country move past the political paralysis that has prevented the election of a new Lebanese president since 2014.

Hezbollah has a strong presence in Lebanon’s parliament. The group is also openly committed to destroying Israel, and its armed wing has an estimated 100,000-plus rockets and missiles aimed at the Jewish state.

Members of Lebanon’s Shiite movement Hezbollah hold their flags during the funeral of a Hezbollah fighter, who was killed while fighting alongside Syrian government forces in Syria, March 1, 2016. (AFP/MAHMOUD ZAYYAT)

Deep divisions among the Lebanon’s Christians, Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Druze leaders have let to the political stalemate in the country.

The tiny Mediterranean nation has been without a president since May 2014, when Michel Sleiman’s mandate expired, and parliament has extended its own mandate twice since 2009.

As a result, government institutions are paralyzed and the country faces a myriad of problems, including the burden of hosting more than a million refugees from war-torn Syria — nearly a quarter of its population.

Hezbollah, which currently has thousands of men fighting in the Syrian civil war, has been on the US’s list of foreign terrorist organizations since 1997. Several European countries — France is not among them — have designated it a terror group, while the EU has reserved that designation for its military wing.

In April, the Arab Parliament, too, voted to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization, weeks after both the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council agreed upon that designation.

Agencies contributed to this report.