Lebanese government to seek private sector support for new national-level airport

A couple of years ago Ireland's proactive daa International was set to operate a new government-built terminal building at Beirut Airport - but it suddenly fell through when the construction project collapsed.

It was a miracle that daa, or anyone else from the west, was there at all. Lebanon's problems are many, and they span four decades, including a bloody 15-year civil war, the present for finally extracting itself from that being a virtual takeover by the political and paramilitary group: Hezbollah.

With that group being decimated in the past six months, the government is turning its attention to long-abandoned projects, one of them being a new commercial airport to be built out of a military airfield in the north of the country. Lebanon only has one of them - in Beirut.

A 2012 report that a previous government commissioned wrote off the prospect as risible, but the Rene Mouawad Airport already had the hallmarks of a low-cost facility, something that would only be recognised by those conversant with the concept.

Now the government is revisiting the notion, and a 'master plan' will be revealed shortly. It would probably build it itself, just as the Beirut terminal would have been, but is already dangling the prospect of private investment into it.

The question is: who in his right mind would commit to such a project? Quite apart from Lebanon's lingering issues the 'new' airport is only 5km from the Syrian border.