Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri called Friday for a plenary session to discuss the ministerial policy statement and to vote on granting confidence to the new government.

The session will be held on Monday morning at 11 am and on the evening of the same day at the UNESCO Palace.

President Michel Aoun on Friday pledged to the Lebanese people that the last year of his six-year tenure will be the “year of real reforms.”

“The forensic audit of the central bank’s accounts is a landmark step on the course of abiding by the rules of transparency, combating corruption, reform and accountability,” Aoun said in a statement, shortly after Finance Minister Youssef Khalil signed a forensic audit contract with the New York-based firm Alvarez & Marsal.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat on Friday commented sarcastically on the entry of Hizbullah-imported Iranian diesel from Syria into Lebanon.

“We no longer know from where the diesel, gasoline and oil convoys are coming,” Jumblat said in a tweet.

The European Parliament has said that the European Union must impose sanctions on Lebanese politicians who impede the new government’s work, days after EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said there was no need for sanctions after a new government was formed in Lebanon on September 10.

The parliament "deeply urges Lebanese leaders to keep their promises and be a functional government," the European Parliament said in a non-binding resolution.

Cabinet on Thursday unanimously approved the ministerial statement of Najib Miqati’s third government, after a ministerial committee held three meetings to finalize it.

The Presidency said the statement was passed with some “minor amendments,” noting that the new government has been called the “together for rescue” government.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has refused during a TV interview to delve into the possibility of him running for presidency when President Michel Aoun’s term ends.

“As long as President Aoun is in Baabda, I will not discuss this issue, and in the face of people’s pain the presidential elections become a small detail,” Bassil told Alaraby TV.

The lead investigative judge into the Beirut port blast, Tarek Bitar, on Thursday issued an arrest warrant in absentia for former public works and transport minister Youssef Fenianos.

The agency said the warrant was issued after Fenianos failed to show up at an interrogation session scheduled for the same day.

The ministerial committee drafting the new government’s policy statement completed its work on Wednesday after a third meeting and Cabinet will convene Thursday to approve it, the information minister said.

“The draft statement will be discussed and approved in a Cabinet session that will be held at 4:00 pm Thursday at the Baabda Palace, and we hope the new government will appear before parliament at the beginning of next week to request confidence from MPs based on this ministerial statement,” the minister, George Kordahi, told reporters.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Ahmed Al Mandhari will visit Beirut from 16-17 September, the WHO said.

“During the visit, the delegation will meet with high level officials, including the President, Prime Minister, Speaker of Parliament and Minister of Public Health, U.N. and NGO partners, and international partners. They will also visit several health facilities to review the response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” a WHO statement said.

The Foreign Ministry building witnessed pandemonium on Monday after the Ministry’s secretary general, Hani Chemaitelly, tried to bar the outgoing deputy PM and defense and foreign minister, Zeina Akar, from entering a department containing the telegrams that come from abroad.

Sources close to Akar told local newspapers that the outgoing minister “wanted to bid farewell to the employees there and to thank them.”