UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, arrived in Libya’s capital Tripoli yesterday for talks with the warring factions fighting for control of the country, in the highest-level visit of a foreign visitor for three months.
Oil producer Libya is struggling with two governments and two Parliaments since an armed group from the western city of Misurata seized the capital in August, setting up its own Cabinet and forcing the internationally recognised government to move to the east.
The secretary-general “will urge (the) Libyan parties to push forward with political dialogue to restore stability to (the) country,” the United Nations said in a tweet.
Western powers and Libya’s neighbours worry that the North African country will become a failed state as former rebels who helped oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 now fight for control and a share of the vast oil reserves.
Ban Ki-moon will meet a deputy speaker and other lawmakers from the elected parliament, the House of Representatives, which has moved to the eastern city of Tobruk, as well as Misurata members of the assembly who have boycotted the sessions.
Two weeks ago the UN started a dialogue to try to end militia fighting. The talks, held in a southern city, have not taken in armed factions from Misurata or a rival militia allied to the western city of Zintan who battled Misrata forces in Tripoli for more than a month over the summer.
But diplomats hope that since Misurata members from the house are indirectly linked to the rival Parliament in Tripoli, the talks will start a broader political dialogue, not just about the House of Representatives.
“We call for a political dialogue ... and welcome the mediating role the UN is playing,” Fathi Bashagha, a lawmaker, from the group which has boycotted the sessions of the assembly in Tobruk, told Reuters.
Libya’s weak central government and fledging national army have been no match for the well-armed factions, who both claim legitimacy for their role in the Nato-backed civil war that ended the late Gaddafi’s dictatorship.
The situation in Tripoli has been worsened by a separate battle in the main eastern city of Benghazi where pro-government forces are battling Islamist militias which have taken several army camps.