French President Emmanuel Macron will convene an international summit on Libya on November 12, about a month before elections in the North African country are set to end a decade of war, but their conduct looks set to be increasingly questionable. The
“With this in mind for the December elections, France will hold an (…) international summit on Libya on November 12,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told a news conference on the sidelines of the 76th General Assembly. UN Convention.
The French Foreign Minister, along with his German and Italian counterparts Haiko Maas and Luigi di Mayo respectively, will also support a meeting dedicated to Libya tomorrow Wednesday in New York.
The French government is calling for the election timetable to be adhered to and for the “withdrawal of foreign forces and mercenaries,” Le Drian recalled.
The September 9th ratification of an election law that looks like it was cut and sewn to the measure of East Libya’s strongman, Khalifa Haftar, escalated tensions three months before the crucial double vote.
The text, which was not put to the vote and was signed by the head of parliament in Tobruk (east), Angila Saleh, an ally of General Haftar, sparked a barrage of criticism from lawmakers and others who marginalized him.
Libya’s Supreme Council of State, the Senate’s equivalent in other states, proposed on Monday to report on presidential elections for at least a year, in the absence of a consensus on the election law.
Libyan Foreign Minister Nazla al-Mangous did not rule out the possibility of postponing the elections until the end of August.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a staunch supporter of General Haftar, is pushing for parliamentary and presidential elections to be held as scheduled in December.
The United States, for its part, has called the vote “the best opportunity” in “a decade” to “end the conflict.”
In December, the UN estimated that there were still some 20,000 mercenaries and foreign fighters in Libya: Wagger Russians, members of armed groups from Chad, Sudan and Syria.
Hundreds of Turkish troops are still present in Libya, forces of a bilateral agreement between the previous government in Tripoli and Ankara.
Source: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ