Fouad Siniora (alternative spellings: Fouad Sanyoura, Fuad Siniora, Fouad Saniora, Fouad Seniora) (Arabic: فؤاد السنيورة, Fu'ād As-Sanyūrah) is the interim Prime Minister of Lebanon, a position he assumed on 19 July 2005, and which officially ended with the end of president Emile Lahoud's term.

Early Life

Siniora was born into a Sunni Muslim family in Sidon in 14 April 1943. He holds a degree in business administration from the American University of Beirut. After working for Citibank and teaching at his alma mater in Beirut in the 1970s, Siniora worked for the Central Bank's audit committee before being employed by late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 1982 in his rapidly growing business empire. Siniora was Minister of Finance for most of the post-war period in Lebanon in Hariri's successive cabinets.

Political career

Fouad Siniora has strong ties with international finance. Strongly pro-business, he is considered a partisan of free trade. He was a close adviser to late Rafik Hariri and he is very close to his son Saad Hariri. He served as finance minister from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2000 to 2004. Siniora was the main designer of the Paris II conference in November 2002 which allowed Lebanon to get US$2.6 billion. He was accused of corruption and mismanagement after Hariri's ousting in 1998, in what was mainly viewed as a conflict between Hariri and President Émile Lahoud. Siniora was cleared of all charges in 2003 by the parliament. In 2002, he abolished most of Lebanon's duty taxes and introduced a Value Added Tax.
After the victory of the anti-Syrian opposition in parliamentary elections held in May and June 2005, Fouad Siniora was asked by President Lahoud on 30 June to form a government. He resigned from the chairmanship of Group Méditerranée (a banking holding controlled by the Hariri family). After laborious negotiations with the President and the different political forces, Siniora formed a government on July 19, 2005. It is the first government formed after the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and the first government to include members of Hezbollah. With regards to Hezbollah, the Siniora cabinet's official stance is that "The government considers the resistance a natural and honest expression of the Lebanese people’s national rights to liberate their land and defend their honour against Israeli aggression and threats". On the other hand, the Siniora cabinet has also been working alongside the March 14 Alliance towards a peaceful disarmament of the Hezbollah military wing through an internal political process. Apart from General Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement, all mainstream political currents are represented as of early December, 2006, Hezbollah and the Amal movement, both major Shi'a parties, left the government. As a result there are no Shi'a minsters left in the Cabinet and fewer mainstream parties are represented.
In April, 2006, Siniora and leading officials paid a high profile visit to Washington, DC, and met with President George W. Bush and a number of cabinet members of the Bush Administration. His public pronouncements have been relatively mute with regard to Syria's alleged involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.
On 27 July 2006, Siniora presented the 7-point Siniora Plan at a 15-nation conference in Rome as a solution to the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. He famously lost control and sobbed for a few seconds during his address to Arab League diplomats in Beirut during the July 2006 war as he described the fate of civilians in Southern Lebanon --then rapidly regained his composure after a standing ovation.

On 12th August, he cautiously welcomed a new UN agreement, as voted for by the UN security council.

Opposition to the Siniora Government

On November 13, 2006, Hezbollah-Amal-backed ministers resigned from Siniora's cabinet to protest the establishment of the international tribunal investigating the assassination of PM Rafiq Hariri in 2005, which the Siniora government, as well as the United States, have accused the Syrian intelligence service of involvement in, a charge denied by Syria. The Lebanese opposition claims that this resignation means that the Siniora Government is not a legitimate one because it does not represents all ethnic groups in Lebanon, namely the Shiite Lebanese. They demand an increase in opposition representation in the cabinet, sufficient to hold veto power over decision making, as their requirement for returning. The government sees this as a Syrian-orchestrated move to block the establishment of the Hariri tribunal.

Fouad Siniora (aussi retranscrit par Fuad Siniora, Fouad Seniora) (1943, Sidon) (arabe : فؤاد السنيوره) est un homme politique libanais. C'est l'actuel premier ministre du Liban.
Il est né dans une famille sunnite de Sidon en 1943. Siniora était un ami d'enfance du premier ministre Rafiq Hariri assassiné en 2005. Diplômé en économie de l'Université américaine de Beyrouth (AUB). Après y avoir travaillé comme professeur ainsi que dans le secteur bancaire (Citibank) dans les années 70, Siniora se retrouve à la tête du comité d'audit de la banque centrale du Liban. En 1982, il rejoint l'empire commercial en plein expansion de Rafiq Hariri et devient un important dirigeant du groupe.
Siniora était un ami et un conseiller de feu Rafiq Hariri et il est aujourd'hui proche du fils de ce dernier, Saad Hariri. Il est ministre d’État aux affaires financières entre 1992 et 1998 puis ministre des Finances entre 2000 et 2004. C'est le principal artisan de la conférence de Paris II en novembre 2002 tenue sous les auspices de Jacques Chirac et qui a permis au Liban de recevoir 2,6 milliards de dollars de prêts. En 1998, il est accusé de corruption et de destruction de documents dans un de ce qui est largement considéré comme un conflit entre le président Émile Lahoud nouvellement élu et le mentor de Siniora, Rafiq Hariri. Après la victoire de Hariri en 2000 et son retour au pouvoir, Siniora redevient ministre et est innocenté des accusations lancées contre lui. En 2002, Siniora introduit une réforme fiscale majeure en réduisant les taxes douanières et en les remplaçant par une TVA de 10 %. C'est lors de son passage au ministère des Finances que la dette publique du Liban explose.
Suite à la « révolution du cèdre » et à la victoire de l'opposition aux élections de mai-juin 2005, Fouad Siniora est chargé par le parlement de former un nouveau gouvernement le 30 juin 2005. Il démissionne alors de son poste de PDG du groupe Méditerranée (un holding bancaire contrôlé par la famille Hariri). Après de laborieuses négociations avec le président Lahoud, Fouad Siniora arrive à former un gouvernement le 19 juillet 2005. C'est le premier gouvernement formé après le retrait des militaires syriens et le premier qui comprend des membres du Hezbollah. À l'exception du bloc du général Michel Aoun, la plupart des courants politiques sont représentés (liste des ministres).
Fouad Siniora est considéré comme un homme favorable au marché. C'est un partisan du libéralisme économique. Siniora est marié à Houda Bsat et il a 3 enfants.
Le 11 novembre 2006, 6 ministres du gouvernement, représentant le président Émile Lahoud, le Hezbollah et Amal (tout les ministres chiites), démissionnent. Depuis, le pays est plongé dans une grande crise constitutionnelle, les partis d'opposition dénonçant la non-constitutionnalité du gouvernement, ne respectant plus la représentativité multi-confessionnelle au Liban alors que l'Alliance du 14 Mars insiste à reconnaitre sa légitimité.
Cette crise s'inscrit parallèlement aux tractations sur la création d'un Tribunal international sur la série d'attentats et d'assassinats survenus depuis le 1er octobre 2004.

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