Delegates for Libya’s rival government in Tripoli will hold off joining peace talks until they manage to form a new team following the resignation of a senior negotiator, a representative said yesterday.
The group did not say how long it might be until they could take part in the UN-backed negotiations in Morocco set up to try and end months of conflict with a separate internationally recognised government.
The announcement was the latest in a series of hold-ups over the talks, which Western officials say are the only hope of halting the fighting that has brought Libya to its knees in the four years since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
The UN has been trying to persuade the country’s warring factions for months to form a unity cabinet and end fighting across the country.
Libya’s main weapon against Islamic State is unity
Militant groups allied to each of the two administrations have brought the country’s oil-dependent economy to its knees, and most of Libya is lawless and run by armed groups attached to neither government. Islamist militants, including Islamic State, have also take advantage of the chaos to gain ground in the north African oil producer. A senior member of the Tripoli delegation quit on Wednesday following what his group described as differences with the head of the Tripoli parliament over the talks.
Both sides face divisions and pressure from hardliners. Mowafaq Hawas, a representative of that parliament, said they would now have to form a new negotiating team.
“This is not because we want to leave the UN dialogue,” he said.
Libya’s internationally recognised government and elected parliament have operated out of the east since an armed alliance known as Libya Dawn took over the capital Tripoli and set up its own self-declared government last year.
Delegates for the recognised government last month agreed to a preliminary deal, but the Tripoli delegation has so far refused to sign. They have been discussing a UN proposal that calls for a one-year government of national accord in which a council of ministers headed by a prime minister and two deputies would have executive authority.
Meanwhile the UN special envoy to Libya, Bernardino Leon, said he was optimistic that the country’s two parliaments will be ready to agree on forming a unity government by mid-September, a vital step towards ending the political crisis and military conflict.
“I continue to believe that around September 10 we will be in a position to have a final agreement,” Leon told France 24 in an interview aired late on Wednesday.
“There are important questions remaining for all parties, but I think we have never been as close as we are now, and it would be tragic that at a time when Libya is so close and the positions of both sides are so close that we are not able to conclude this accord.”
“The priority is to conclude a political accord. Libya’s main weapon against Islamic State is unity,” Leon said, when asked whether there should be an international intervention to fight the group.