Armed clashes resumed early Tuesday in the south of the Libyan capital Tripoli, as the commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA) Khalifa Haftar left Moscow without signing a ceasefire agreement, the Al Arabiya TV channel reported.
In talks that lasted about eight hours, mediators Russia and Turkey urged the rivals to sign a binding truce and pave the way for a settlement that would stabilize the North African country mired in chaos since the NATO-led operation that toppled and killed Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Fayez al-Serraj, who heads Libya’s Tripoli-based internationally recognized government which is battling to fend off an offensive by the Haftar’s eastern based Libya National Army (LNA) faction, signed the ceasefire agreement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
Libya has two parallel bodies of executive power: the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) headed by al-Sarraj, and Abdullah Abdurrahman al-Thani’s interim government, operating in the country’s east together with a parliament and, crucially, supported by Haftar’s LNA.
After a prolonged standoff that has engulfed the area near Tripoli since April 4, Haftar on December 12 declared the beginning of a decisive push towards the capital.
The ceasefire proposed by Russian and Turkish Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan as part of a larger initiative to achieve peace in Libya entered into force at midnight on January 12.
Lavrov said Monday that al-Sarraj, and head of Libya’s High Council of State Khaled al-Mishri, signed the draft document during talks in Moscow.
Libya’s civil war, triggered by Gaddafi’s ousting and subsequent killing, has wrecked Libya’s economy and risks disrupting oil production and triggering flows of African migrants trying to reach Europe by sea with the help of smugglers exploiting the chaos.
The Russo-Turkish push, which involved laborious indirect contacts between the two Libyan delegations, is the latest attempt to end the chaos playing out in the oil-producing North African country.
