L'HAŸ-LES-ROSES, France — France's reappointed Prime Minister SebastienLecornu said Saturday he was to form a government "not imprisoned by the parties" to tackle a political crisis "painful for everyone".

 

"I will do my duty and I will not be a problem," Lecornu vowed a day after President Emmanuel Macron named him back into the job -- just four days after Lecornu had resigned from it.

 

His reappointment comes as France faces political deadlock and a parliamentary impasse over a cost-cutting budget against a backdrop of climbing public debt.

 

Macron's decision to keep Lecornu as his premier is his latest gambit as he tries to see through the final year and a half of his presidential mandate.

 

The president unleashed the political uncertainty with snap legislative elections last year that resulted in a hung parliament.

 

Lecornu, a Macron ally skilled in backroom negotiations but largely unknown to the broader French population, on Saturday visited a police station in the southern Paris suburb of L'Hay-les-Roses.

 

There, he reiterated that he had "no agenda" and stated that "all debates are possible" on the thorny issue of reforms to France's pension system that has raised the hackles of leftist parties.

 

But Lecornu also has to thread the needle with the conservative Les Republicains (LR) party.

 

Bruno Retailleau, the hardline LR interior minister in the previous government, on Saturday said his party should not take any of the portfolios in the next government Lecornu is trying to form.