Lebanese Minister for Foreign Affairs Gebran Bassil has said that there is currently an anti-Lebanon campaign in the Middle East, aimed at "intimidating" his country and forcing it to give up a joint gas project with Russia.
Beirut has faced certain difficulties in the course of its own efforts to “stabilize the region,” the Lebanese foreign minister said on Friday, ahead of his talks with Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov in Moscow. He revealed that, prior to the current crisis, Lebanon was "almost at a threshold of the first-ever contract to develop shale-gas fields with... Russian companies." However, a campaign to hinder the deal "under various pretexts" is now underway, he claimed.