Contacts with the delegation of the interim government in Eastern Libya, held in Moscow on Tuesday, took place on a political, not military, line, Russian Special Presidential Representative for the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said, commenting on reports that the Russian Foreign Ministry held consultations with a delegation of the Libyan National Army (LNA), which is commanded by field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.
"There was a meeting with the government delegation of the East of Libya, which included Foreign Minister (Abdul Hadi Al-Hweij - TASS) and representatives of the Parliament," he said.
Bogdanov stressed that the contacts took place precisely on the political line, and not on the military one. "This was a delegation of the interim government in the East of the country, not the Libyan National Army," he added.
As noted in the message of the Russian Foreign Ministry following the meeting, the Russian side gave a high assessment of the Cairo Declaration of June 6, calling on the participants of the Libyan conflict to immediately and unconditionally cease hostilities and launch the negotiation process. It was stressed that the provisions of this initiative could form the basis of "long-overdue inter-Libyan negotiations" aimed at developing compromise agreements on the post-conflict settlement of Libya.
In Libya, for a long time, there have been two bodies of executive power: the Government of National Accord (GNA) of Faiz Sarraj, sitting in Tripoli, and the interim Cabinet of Abdullah Abdurrahman al-Thani, operating in the East of the country jointly with the Parliament and supported by the LNA. For more than a year, the opposing camps have been fighting for the country's main city, after Haftar launched an offensive on the capital on April 4, 2019, with the goal, as he claimed, of liberating it from terrorists.
On June 13, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported that Russian Foreign and Defense Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Sergey Shoigu would travel to Turkey on June 14 for interdepartmental consultations on regional issues. On June 14, the Russian Foreign Ministry indicated that the date of the meeting would be agreed upon additionally. One of the main topics of the Ministers' contacts in Turkey was to be the situation in Libya and ways out of the situation there. Lavrov told reporters on Tuesday that Russia was in contact with Turkey to try to persuade the parties to the conflict in Libya to sit down at the negotiating table.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Vladimir Gerdo / TASS