Turkish president receives Lebanon's Hariri

ISTANBUL

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday received Lebanon's Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri.

Erdogan met with Hariri at Vahdettin Palace in Istanbul after attending a groundbreaking ceremony. The meeting was held closed-doors and no details of the meeting were made available.

Lebanon is stuck in the formation of a new government amid differences between Prime Minister-designate Hariri and President Michel Aoun.

Since October 2019, Lebanon has been experiencing a severe economic crisis and a deterioration in living conditions, the worst for the Lebanese people since the five-year civil war that ended in 1990.

A massive blast last August at the Port of Beirut, which left at least 200 Lebanese dead and thousands injured, made the already fragile situation even worse.