World powers make new efforts for peace in Libya

The Prime Minister of Libya’s interim government, Abdul Hamid Debebah, joined the United States Secretary of State Anthony Brinken and the foreign ministers of France, Turkey and Egypt to participate in talks initiated by the United Nations.

The effort to end the decade-long cycle of violence in Libya was the second round of negotiations in Berlin, after the presidents of Turkey, Russia, and France attended the meeting for the first time in January 2020 before the pandemic.

Brinken told reporters before the opening of the meeting that the ceasefire agreement reached in October last year “must be fully implemented, including the withdrawal of all foreign troops.”

“We refuse to return to war,” he said, but added that the presence of foreign fighters is still a source of instability.

But both Moscow and Ankara have important forces in the country, but neither has fulfilled their promises.

-No one is interested-

In recent years, Libya has split into two hostile governments backed by foreign troops and countless militias.

Since then, the security situation in Libya has been slowly improving.

Western leaders have repeatedly called on foreign fighters to leave.

At the same time, Turkey has troops in Tripoli, which it believes are dispatched under a bilateral agreement with the government, which means that they are not affected by requests for withdrawal of foreign troops.

“Foreign troops must leave the country in a gradual and unified manner so that there is no sudden military imbalance that can be used by one side to launch a sudden attack,” Maas told Le Monde.

But he is also cautiously optimistic that some progress may be made on Wednesday, because it is not in anyone’s interest to break out of conflict again.

“Someone might come up with a good idea to reach agreement on the basis of the constitution in July and hold elections in December,” he said, referring to a key requirement of the polls.

bur-hmn / mfp / bp

…