New Lebanese President Joseph Aoun began parliamentary consultations Monday to designate a prime minister tasked with forming a government desperately needed to tackle major challenges in the crisis-hit country.

Caretaker premier Najib Mikati and Nawaf Salam, a favourite of anti-Hezbollah lawmakers who is the presiding judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, have emerged as the frontrunners.

The first round of talks ended shortly before midday with 12 independent lawmakers backing Salam, seven picking Mikati, and two others choosing neither of them.

Aoun was then to meet the main parliamentary blocs in the afternoon.

The consultations, a constitutional requirement, follow Aoun's election last week amid foreign pressure for swift progress -- particularly from the United States and Saudi Arabia.

The eastern Mediterranean nation had been without a president since October 2022, run by a caretaker government amid a crushing economic crisis compounded by all-out war between Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israel.

Under Lebanon's power-sharing system, Lebanon's president is a Maronite Christian, the prime minister is a........

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