Moscow hopes that the work on the final political settlement in Libya will be successful and the agreements reached will be implemented, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told an interview with Russian and foreign media on Thursday.
"75 people gathered in Tunis with the support of the UN. They are delegates of three historical districts of Libya, they have to work out a road map of the final political settlement and provision of the stable political structure of their country - preparation of constitution, creation of presidential council with equal representation of all three districts of Libya, creation of government, elections of parliament", the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
According to him, this discussed political process is "written for one and a half or two years". "We very much hope that this work will be successful and, most importantly, the results of this work will be implemented, and not just remain on paper after the next conference," the minister stressed.
Libyan settlement
"From the very beginning of the Libyan crisis, we must not forget its gnoseology - this is the grossest aggression of the NATO, which bombed Libya, destroyed the Libyan statehood, it all gave rise to flows of terrorists, smuggling of weapons and drugs to Africa through Libya to the south and north, the flow of illegal migrants, from which Europe began to choke," said the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry. "Despite the fact that the problem was not created by us, we are, of course, interested in preventing its immortalization, prevent it from becoming a permanent pus," said Lavrov. He reminded that Moscow "from the very early stages after the end of the NATO aggression, when Libya split into several parts and there were already doubts about whether it would be possible to bring together this once quite prosperous, thriving country, began working to create conditions for the resumption of some kind of inter-Libyan dialogue". "We were working with all political forces of Libya without exception, we were practically the only ones who were doing it then because all the other external players chose their wards and began to patronize them," said the Russian minister. In his assessment, "Libya was in a very deplorable state".
Lavrov also recalled the agreement concluded in 2013, which first established the balance of power in Libya. "Such a harmonious scheme was created that the government acts with the support of the parliament. Unfortunately, it did not work for a long time, the contradictions between the two camps affected, then the fighting resumed, and there were many attempts to hold any conferences," the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry described the course of events. "All this resembled attempts to make a good mine in case of a bad game, because the calls, the appointment of specific election days were not supported by anything, and only recently, including the more active involvement of Russia and Turkey, given that our countries had special ties with the players on the Libyan field, we tried to use our influence to encourage the conflicting parties to find a compromise," Lavrov said.
In his view, "an important stage was the Berlin Conference in January of this year," which resulted in the adoption of UN Security Council resolutions. "We have made a decisive contribution to the decision to invite the Libyan parties themselves to the Berlin Conference; initially, the Germans did not want to do this, they wanted to make the next meeting of external players, to discuss some principles in this circle and then put the Libyans before the fact, they did not even want to call Libya's neighbors," - recalled the minister. "Even with the participation of Libyans and neighbors, the conference ended with the adoption of a document, but there were doubts about the extent to which these documents would be perceived on the ground," Lavrov admitted.
According to the Russian Foreign Minister, the current approach to settling the situation in Libya corresponds to the one "which Russia promoted initially".
Libyan oil
Lavrov confirmed that the Libyan parties were invited to Moscow in September "in order to help them agree on arrangements to resume oil sales". "Such an agreement was reached, as I understand it, there are still some legal and property details to be adjusted as exports resume," Lavrov said. According to his data, the Libyan Oil Corporation, the government and the Libyan parliament are currently engaged in this process.
"As for the impact of this process on the world oil markets, on the price of energy resources, it certainly has some impact. Now the trend is upward in the oil market," the Minister noted. "In any case, when we talk about the need to regulate the oil market, we do not mean to do it at the expense of discrimination against one or another hydrocarbon producer," the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation said.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS