Warring sides negotiating formal ceasefire in Libya, says UN rep
The UN’s special representative for Libya said yesterday the country’s warring sides are working to turn a provisional ceasefire into a formal agreement as they emerged from four days of talks, a prospect that appears to face steep obstacles.
Ghassan Salame, head of the United Nations support mission in Libya, said rival military leaders are negotiating the remaining sticking points in a ceasefire deal.
Those include the return of internally displaced people, the disarmament of armed groups and ways to monitor a truce, which each side has accused the other of violating. He said the ceasefire would be monitored by the military representatives in Geneva with support from the UN Mission in Libya.
Another unresolved issue, he said, is how to deal with heavy weaponry, which powerful foreign backers continue sending to Libya, despite their pledges not to at a highprofile summit last month in Berlin.
‘‘There are still two or three points of divergence,’’ Salame told reporters in Geneva.
He said delegates will reconvene today to discuss the latest draft. That agreement must then be sent back to their respective leaders for approval.
The latest round of fighting erupted last April when easternbased forces under the command of Khalifa Hifter laid siege to Tripoli in a bid to wrest power from the UNbacked government led by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj.
Sarraj and Hifter both sent delegations of military officials to represent them at the Geneva talks.
Yet even as the delegates conferred, the suburbs of Libya’s capital came under heavy fire, health authorities said, which killed at least four civilians in the last 24 hours.
A 15-year-old boy struck by a shell last week died from his wounds on Thursday, pushing the toll to at least five.
‘‘I’ve noticed more strikes this week, and the victims have been civilians’’ said Assad Jaafar, a spokesman for Libya’s Red Crescent based in Tripoli.
The uptick of violence comes amid intensified diplomacy among world powers seeking to end the conflict that has ravaged Libya for nine years.
The UN Security Council in New York met this week to discuss a draft resolution to uphold the widely flouted arms embargo. And
Algeria’s foreign minister visited Hifter and tribal leaders Wednesday to present a still opaque, African Union-backed alternative to European efforts.
Libya’s fate lies in the hands of foreign powers, which have conflicting interests in the oil-rich country and are reluctant to make concessions.
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. In the latest twist, Turkey
has deployed Syrian fighters affiliated with al Qaeda and the Islamic State to the Libyan battlefield.
Current ceasefire talks, meant to pave the way for negotiations ‘‘have yielded a violent political process instead of quiet,’’ said Anas El Gomati, director of the Tripolibased Sadeq Institute, offering diplomatic cover to Hifter’s forces as they embark on a military offensive.
Rival Libyan leaders and their foreign backers ‘‘are using military tools to put pressure on talks, and are making civilians into bargaining chips,’’ he said.