UN Envoy to Libya Holds Consultations with Morocco

UN special envoy to Libya Ghassan Salamé held talks Monday in Rabat with Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, focused on the Libya crisis.

At a joint press briefing following the meeting, Bourita renewed Morocco’s support to an inter-Libyan solution under the aegis of the UN to achieve a final settlement of the crisis in the North African country, while Ghassan Salamé vowed to continue consultations with Morocco on all the aspects of the Libyan crisis.

Nasser Bourita underscored that “Morocco supports a solution formulated by the Libyans themselves” and stressed the role of the UN as the unique body empowered to solve the Libyan crisis.

Given the Maghreb scope of the Libyan crisis, Morocco attaches particular interest to the settlement of the Libya crisis, in the framework of the Skhirat agreement and the various proposals put on the table to bring this sister country out of the impasse, Bourita said.

The UN envoy said his visit to Rabat actually falls in the context of consultations with the Kingdom on how to take advantage of the next steps to help restore stability in Libya.

The last few months have been marked by serious incidents in Libya, including in the oil crescent, the worsening of terrorist activity in some areas, including in Tripoli, and the clashes that threatened the stability of the capital last September, the Lebanese diplomat recalled.

Expressing hope that the stability currently prevailing would continue to offer propitious conditions to relaunch the political process, Ghassan Salamé described the coming steps as “important”. He mentioned in this connection the international conference scheduled to be held in Palermo, Italy, November 12-13 and the briefing he will shortly make to the UN Security Council on the political situation in Libya.

The Palermo international conference on Libya, sponsored by Italy, is meant to come out with a peace plan that would hopefully end the several years of political turmoil that ensued the 2011 NATO-backed revolution, which toppled Muammar Ghaddafi.

This international Conference was at the focus of talks that Ghassan Salame held with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in Rome last Friday.

Giuseppe Conte also conferred the same day with Head of Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) Fayez al-Sarraj on efforts underway to bring together all rival Libyan parties to attend the Palermo conference.

Conte had previously said that the meeting is aimed at reasserting the international community’s strong support for the country’s UN-led political process.

Before flying to Rome, Ghassan Salamé held talks Thursday with Khalifa Haftar, head of self-imposed Libyan National Army (LNA), at the LNA headquarters in al-Rajma on the outskirts of the eastern city of Benghazi.

A brief statement from Haftar’s office said they had discussed the latest local and international developments, while Salamé stated that the talks focused on the latest developments in Libya and ways of ending the crisis.