Italian hosts confident Haftar will attend Libya summit
PALERMO, Italy (Reuters) - Italy said on Monday it was confident the strongman who rules eastern Libya, Khalifa Haftar, would attend a peace summit, as Italian officials prepared to open the conference with no public sign yet whether Haftar would arrive.
Libya’s prime minister, who is based in the west, arrived for the conference, but Haftar, the most powerful man in the east, kept the hosts guessing about his plans.
Italy hopes the conference in the Sicilian city of Palermo will resurrect U.N. efforts to stage elections in Libya after the United Nations finally abandoned plans last week to hold a vote next month.
“I expect him (Haftar) to be present since there is no doubt that he is one of the decisive players of the stabilization of his country,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told La Stampa newspaper.
Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj’s western-based government is internationally recognized but has struggled to assert its authority in a country still mostly controlled by armed groups, eight years after NATO-backed rebels toppled long-serving dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi.
A rival parliament and government are based in the east, where most towns and cities are under the control of Haftar.
Officials in Haftar’s office were unavailable to confirm whether would attend the conference, which Italy hopes will give new impetus to peace efforts. Last week, U.N. Envoy Ghassan Salame abandoned a Western plan to hold elections in Libya on Dec. 10.
Italy, the former colonial power, has vast oil and gas interests in Libya and has been trying to shut down people-smuggling from the Libyan coast.
It has been eager to host a high-profile event, competing with France which staged a similar conference in May at which Serraj and Haftar verbally agreed to the U.N. plan for elections in December. That was the last time Serraj and Haftar met.
Apart from European officials, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi departed on Monday for the conference, which is set to start with a dinner late on Monday.
U.N. Libya envoy Ghassan Salame told Reuters he hoped another attempt to hold an election will take place by June but Libyans should first hold a national conference in early 2019 to decide on the poll’s format.
“We want to ask at the national conference what type of election do you want: parliamentary or presidential, and what kind of law,” Salame said.
The envoy said the national conference should “preferably” take place on Libyan soil. Surveys had shown that 80 percent of Libyans want elections to end the stalemate between Libya’s rival administrations.
He hoped the Palermo conference would put pressure on the internationally recognized parliament, the House of Representatives (HOR), which has failed to pass an election law.
“The HOR has been sterile, has produced no law ... I think we need wider representation of the Libyans,” he said.
France has been courting Haftar, who is supported by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which see his forces as a bulwark against Islamists.
Italy is the main backer of Serraj and his weak Government of National Accord (GNA), and has worked with local groups in Libya to stop Europe-bound migrants from embarking by boat.
Reporting by Ulf Laessing, Ayat Basma, Eleanor Biles and Vlad Pantaleone; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Crispian Balmer and Peter Graff
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