Fighting ‘terrorism’ is priority in Libya: UAE

The UAE said yesterday that fighting “terrorism” was the priority in Libya. Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army launched an assault on forces loyal to the government in and around the capital on April 4, triggering fighting that has killed 376 people, according to the World Health Organization. “Priority in Libya is to counter extremism/terrorism and support stability in long drawn out crisis,” the UAE minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, said on Twitter. “Abu Dhabi agreement offered opportunity to support UN-led process.

“Meanwhile, extremist militias continue to control capital and derail search for political solution,” Gargash said. The Abu Dhabi agreement he referred to was a renewed commitment to organising nationwide elections that Haftar and unity government leader Fayez al-Sarraj made after a UN-backed meeting in the UAE capital on February 27. The UN had hoped to convene a conference in the Libyan oasis town of Ghadames last month to draw up a roadmap for the elections but was forced to cancel it in the face of the upsurge of fighting.

The WHO says more than 1,800 people have been wounded in the fighting, which has turned some southern districts of the capital into war zones, while more than 40,000 civilians have fled their homes. A British-led effort to secure agreement within the UN Security Council on a demand for a ceasefire has run into the ground after the United States withheld its support in an apparent tilt towards Haftar.

Major powers are deeply divided over the conflict.  Haftar’s forces are pressing on with an offensive that saw them overrun virtually all of the oasis towns and oilfields of Libya’s vast southern desert before turning their sights on government forces in Tripoli.