The UN’s envoy for Libya held talks in Tripoli on Friday, seeking to encourage the administration there to commit to a national unity government that would end years of bloodshed.
Martin Kobler, on a desperate diplomatic push to get Libya’s two separate administrations to sign a power-sharing agreement, on Thursday met with representatives of the internationally-recognized government near its headquarters in the east of the country.
“More discussions in Tripoli — I invite all to take responsibility for Libya’s future, take responsibility for next generations,” Kobler tweeted on Friday after meeting with the head of the rival parliament in Tripoli, Nouri Abusahmein.
Photo: AFP
Libya has been in chaos since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi and now has two governments and parliaments.
Militant groups such as the Islamic State have taken advantage of the lawlessness to make gains along the coastline, and the UN estimates that fighting has forced 435,000 people from their homes.
On Dec. 17, under UN guidance, envoys from both sides and a number of independent political figures signed a deal to unify the government.
About 80 of 188 lawmakers from Libya’s internationally recognized parliament and 50 of 136 members of the rival Tripoli-based General National Congress signed the deal.
It calls for a 17-member government, headed by businessman Fayez el-Sarraj as premier, based in Tripoli.
Abusahmein asked Kobler to meet a number of leaders in the Tripoli-based administration, including senior military and intelligence officers and judiciary.
“We believe that for any political agreement to be effective on the ground, all parties tasked with implementing it have to be present with us today,” he said.
At a press conference in a VIP lounge at Tripoli’s Mitiga Airport late Friday, Kobler said that in meetings with both administrations he put forward “five points.”
First, “the Libyan political agreement is the basis of all discussions. There is no alternative,” he said.
Second, “there should be no parallel initiatives. All initiatives should be based under the umbrella of the United Nations,” Kobler added.
The process must be “inclusive,” and also be guided by the principle of “the peaceful transfer of power from the old institutions to the new institutions,” he said.
Finally, he said, there was “the principle of Libyan ownership. It must be a Libyan agreement and the Libyans must steer the process.”
The press conference was cut short by Jamal Zoubia, head of the media department in the Tripoli-based government, who told Kobler that the event was “illegal” as he needed prior permission.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.