UN envoy says push continues toward cease-fire deal in Libya

Monitoring Desk

CAIRO: The U.N.’s special representative for Libya said Thursday the country’s warring sides are working to turn a provisional cease-fire into a formal agreement as they emerged from four days of talks.

Ghassan Salame, head of the United Nations support mission in Libya, said rival military leaders are negotiating the remaining sticking points in a cease-fire deal. Those include the return of internally displaced people, the disarmament of armed groups and ways to monitor the truce.

“The cease-fire agreement is made of a number of issues, and there have been points of convergence on many points. And there are points of divergence,” Salame told reporters in Geneva.

The latest round of fighting in oil-rich Libya erupted last April when eastern-based forces under the command of Khalifa Hifter laid siege to Tripoli in a bid to wrest power from the U.N.-backed government led by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj.

Sarraj and Hifter both sent delegations of military officials to represent them at the Geneva talks.

The cease-fire talks come amid intensified diplomacy among world powers seeking to end the conflict that has ravaged Libya for nine years.

Hifter’s forces, which control much of Libya’s east and south, rely on military assistance from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, as well as France and Russia.

On the other side, Turkey, Italy and Qatar prop up the embattled Tripoli-based government.

World powers have deplored the reality on the ground and pledged to uphold a widely flouted U.N. arms embargo at a peace summit last month in Berlin. But continued violations of the ban have dimmed hopes that international players in Libya can resolve the crisis. (AP)