Bernardino Leon speaking to the press this morning (Photo: UNSMIL)
The latest UN-sponsored Dialogue negotiations in the Moroccan resort of Skhirat have taken an unexpected break after General National Congress (GNC) delegation decided to return to Tripoli last night to consult with their colleagues about amendments to Draft No. 4. The amended draft was given to them yesterday and they were reported to have refused to agree to it.
Others attending at the talks, including foreign ambassadors, have also left Morocco but say they hope to return as soon as possible for a final agreement.
At a press conference, early this morning, the UN Special Envoy, Bernardino Leon said that both the GNC and the House of Representatives (HoR) teams had left for consultations, that they would return on Wednesday, that the session would resume on Thursday and that he expected the whole draft to then be approved.
There were just “two or three” points in contention, he said, the most important being the Supreme Court’s ruling last year on the legitimacy of the House of Representatives, and the composition of the State Council.
On the first, Leon said while the UN and the international community respected the Supreme Court, they took the view that it had not in effect nullified either last year’s elections or the mandate of House of Representatives. Tripoli, he stated, had expressed reservations on this.
On the second, he said he was sticking to having 90 members of the State Council selected from the GNC despite it wanting more and the HoR team wanting less. The two sides had to resolve this in the next couple of days.
Leon also indicated that the delegates were not yet at the point of discussing names for the new government. That would happen only after the agreement had been initialised, and it would not happen this week.
“On Thursday we will try initialise the agreement. It will pave the way to discussions on the unity government and on the annexes [to the agreement which will include the names of the prime minister and deputy prime minister]. Only when all this work is finished, will the parties be in a position to sign the agreement. This week what we’re trying to do it to initialise the text.”
There has been considerable anger expressed on Libyan social media sites at a list of names in the new national unity government supposedly approved in Skhirat. The list which includes Dialogue delegate Fathi Bashagha as Minister of Defence, former Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur as Minister of International Cooperation and former prime ministerial nominee Ahmed Maetig as Minister as Minister of Finance, has been dismissed by UNSMIL as fake.
This was not the first list of members of the new government to have appeared in recent days and it is not clear why so many people chose to believe it was true, especially since it is known that the Dialogue delegates will select the prime minister and deputy premiers but not the government ministers.
They are to be selected by the prime minister and his deputies once the three are agreed.
