IMF team to visit Lebanon soon -European official

SINGAPORE, Sep 19: The IMF will dispatch a team of economic experts to war-ravaged Lebanon in the next few days as Arab and Western powers mobilise money and moral support for a country considered strategically crucial, a European official said today.

''It's a fact-finding mission,'' said the official, who spoke after a meeting on Monday with the finance minister and central bank chief of Lebanon in Singapore, where the International Monetary Fund's 184 member nations were gathered.

It was too soon to say whether the mission sent by the IMF, which has served for decades as lender and adviser to countries in economic trouble, would be the prelude to an IMF-managed economic programme after a 34-day war between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Lebanon had slid into the jaws of recession because of the war and a two-month blockade of its air and sea ports, but that its economic system had been stabilised.

''There was no big capital flight from the country,'' said the official.

Lebanon attracted pledges of over 900 million dollar in donations for short-term reconstruction at a conference in Stockholm last month.

Saudi Arabia had also lodged 1.0 billion dollars in the Lebanese central bank and Kuwait 500 million dollars, the official said.

''What's striking is how Arab countries, too, see Lebanon as strategic in the region. This all goes well beyond Lebanon's borders,'' the official said.

Last week the IMF forecast recession in Lebanon this year after what had started out as a potentially bumper year for an economy that is primarily service-based.

REUTERS