The Maltese government has welcomed the UN proposal for a Libyan national unity government.
“We have never been so close to a way forward to ease the suffering of the Libyan people. This development benefits the Maltese national interest as well as the regional stability,” Foreign Minister George Vella said following the announcement by the UN’s Special Representative Bernardino Leon on Thursday.
The development came after nearly a year of talks between the administration in Tobruk and the parliament in Tripoli.
The hope is that this will lead to stitching the country back together again following the revolution that ousted Gaddafi in 2011. A loose alliance of militias, including Islamists, were unhappy with the composition of the new parliament after the June 2014 elections. The following August they seized Tripoli and forced members of parliament to flee to Tobruk, where they reinstated the General National Congress (GNC) elected in 2012.
We have never been so close to a way forward to ease the suffering of the Libyan people
While Libya has no official national army, each side is backed by alliances of former anti-Gaddafi rebels, ex-soldiers, tribal factions and Islamist-leaning brigades. In 2011 they had fought together against Gaddafi’s forces but eventually turned against each other following the dictator’s downfall.
According to Mr Leon’s statement, Fayez Sarraj, from the Tripoli parliament, would be nominated as prime minister, assisted by three deputies representing Libya’s east, west and south. Two women ministers are included on the list. Moussa al-Kouni, one of the proposed deputy prime ministers, said: “The hardest part has just begun.”
The next step is the endorsement of the proposal by the elected parliament at Tobruk and the GNC in Tripoli. Both sides have so far refrained from committing themselves.
Abdulsalam Bilashahir, a member of the GNC, said: “We are not a part of this (proposed) government. It means nothing to us and we were not consulted.
“This proposed government will lead to the division of Libya and will turn it into a joke. Mr Leon’s choice was unwise,” warned Ibrahim Alzaghiat, also from the Tobruk-based parliament.
Contacted by the Times of Malta, Libya expert Ranier Fsadni said that although governing and rebuilding Libya would be more difficult than getting a unity government in place, the achievement in actually getting agreement on the names of a unity government should not be underestimated.
“Many previous predictions – some by Libyans close to the negotiating sides – that agreement was just a few short weeks away had been proven wrong. A unity government is what the majority of Libyans want,” Mr Fsadni said.