Libyan premier meets Italian FM in Tripoli

By Walid Abdullah

TRIPOLI (AA) – The prime minister of Libya’s unity government, Fayez al-Sarraj, met Saturday with Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano in the capital Tripoli.

Speaking during the meeting, al-Sarraj called on the international community to take a firm stance against parties hindering the UN-backed political deal for resolving the conflict in Libya.

“Failure by some parties to implement what has been agreed upon confuses the political scene in Libya,” he said, according to a statement issued by his office.

Last week, East Libya-based military commander Khalifa Haftar, whose forces control parts of Libya, said the 2015 agreement that gave rise to Libya’s UN-backed unity government was over.

For his part, Alfano, who arrived in Tripoli earlier Saturday, reiterated his country’s support for al-Sarraj's to heal Libyan rifts and restore stability to the country.

He also underlined his support for UN envoy Ghassan Salame’s roadmap aiming to resolve the country’s longstanding political crisis. The roadmap calls for holding presidential and parliamentary polls within one year.

The plan is ultimately aimed at establishing a “unified, representative” government within the framework of a 2015 political agreement -- which has since been slightly modified -- between the country’s rival political camps.

Libya has remained in a state of turmoil since 2011, when a bloody uprising led to the ouster and death of longtime President Muammar Gaddafi.

In the six years since, the country's stark political divisions have yielded two rival seats of government -- one in Tobruk and another in Tripoli -- and a plethora of heavily armed militia groups.