Ibrahim El Khoury, President Director General of public broadcaster Télé Liban, exclusively informed esctoday.com that Lebanon will be present at the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest in Kiev.

The Asian country, situated north from Israel, has almost 4,4 million inhabitants. 1,2 million of them live in Lebanon's capital Beirut. More information about Lebanon can be found here.

It seems that Lebanon will select its representative internally. “As for our reprensentative, we will provide you all details as soon as possible”, El Khoury told us. Esctoday.com editor Roel Philips recently contacted Télé Liban after receiving strong indications that Lebanon would be present at next year's contest.

Update 16:01 CET
The European Broadcasting Union couldn't confirm or deny the information from Télé Liban yet. Until the end of this month it's possible for broadcasters to apply for participation and it's generally assumed that the EBU is waiting until they can offer a complete list of participants.