BRUSSELS - Entrepreneur and philanthropist Fouad Makhzoumi has indicated he would be willing to try and form a government in Lebanon to fill the power vaccuum on condition that electoral reforms are introduced to bring Lebanese youth into the political process.

 Makzhoumi, Chairman of Future Pipe Industries and founder of the Makhzoumi foundation, told the Italian Insider on the fringes of a Gulf Mediterranean conference in Brussels that he would be willing to throw his hat in the Lebanese ring to become prime minister. "I will be interested in such a job as long as we are going to be doing reform of the election law to make young people feel full partners," he said in an interview.

 "We have the format of a nation but we don't have the institutions at this stage," he added. Lebanon effectively since 1972 has not had free elections due to Syrian control and now is struggling with dlrs 70 billion of debt, he underlined.

 "The rest of the world is trying to hold it together with rubber bands. If you look across the region it is the same problem everywhere."

 Much of the turmoil in the region has developed due to misguided Western meddling in the Arab spring, he said. "Most of the region had moved away from democracy to police states with people being told 'We don't trust you because you may be agents of Israel.'"

 "After years of this people said 'enough is enough.' The West saw this oppourtunity and instead of supporting civil society movements it took sides."

Makzhoumi underlined the non-military instability factors in the region by pointing out that while the Middle East provides 40 percent of the world's energy its' population of 350 million people struggle to survive on low incomes. In Lebanon the average wage is dlrs 500 a month while Daesh is offering dlrs 800 or 1000 a month.

He urged the West to provide funding so that he can give more young people among the 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon a future through occupational training and micro credit schemes.

 "We have to educate and train people so that they don't become pariahs," he said. "A child who spends the first 10 years of his life without education is lost. Let's work to invest your money so that migrants when you need them to come to Europe already have skills to offer."

 Surveys of the 400,000 people who have benefited from help from his foundation show that most of them have moved away from the grip of the country's militias, he added.

 Makzhoumi, seen by commentators as a potential future Lebanese prime minister, insisted that Lebanon will never strip its Christian communities, making up a third of their population, of their rights.

"In Lebanon we are all minorities. If Lebanon didn't have the Christian component Lebanon would never have been independent from Syria."

The drama of the dispossessed in the Middle East was evident also in Egypt where Makzhoumi said that during the 'Arab Spring' demonstrations in Cairo he saw people carrying placards saying simply "We want to eat" and "we want to live."

"It has nothing to do with democracy. Isis has learnt from Al Qaeda not to be mobile but to crearte a state. In the minds of young people who have a disconnection with their own states they see it as an option."

"Young people have to see that they have a role to play, that they have a future, not looking at migration and leaving their countries."

However Lebanon needs new leaders rather than the old guard remaining from the country's civil war.

"We went into war for 15 years then for 25 years you have the same people that took us to war."

"How can you expect them to build a future that will undermine their role in society?"