TUNIS (Reuters) – The United Nations Envoy to Libya said alternative mechanisms might have to be used if rival sides cannot find a solution to the country’s political crisis.
Libya has had little peace since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi and led to a 2014 split between warring eastern and western factions.
In his report to the United Nations Security Council, Abdoulaye Bathily detailed the political stalemate over control of an interim government and a constitutional way to hold elections, attributing the conflict to the heads of Libya’s two legislative bodies, House of Representatives (HoR) and the High State Council (HSC).
“The continued disagreement between two individual men, the speaker of the HoR and the president of the HSC… can no longer serve as a justification to hold an entire country hostage,” Bathily said.
“If the two institutions cannot reach an agreement swiftly, alternative mechanisms can, and should be used to alleviate the sufferings caused by outdated and open ended interim political arrangements,” he added, without elaborating.
Many Libyans believe their political leaders are unwilling to find a way out of the country’s endless political logjam because elections, seen internationally as key to the process, could push them all from power.
As Libya’s political divisions have intensified this year, some of the political progress that had been made after a ceasefire between the main warring sides in 2020 has been undone.
After the 2020 ceasefire, they agreed to hold elections on Dec. 24 2021 and installed a new unity government that was meant to reunify divided national institutions.
But the election process fell apart amid disputes over the rules and the HoR, the parliament which was aligned with eastern forces during the civil war, said the unity government had lost its mandate.
It declared a new administration but the unity government refused to cede power and was still recognised by the United Nations and Western countries.
The standoff has prompted several outbursts of fighting this year but no return to major conflict. Meanwhile, efforts to reunify the divided central bank have faltered and a new row has broken out over control of the judiciary.
(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Josie Kao)
