ROME, December 2. /TASS/. It is necessary to motivate all parties to the Libyan conflict to search for generally acceptable agreements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday after talks with his Italian counterpart Paolo Gentiloni.
"That is why when the United Nations Security Council was approving the Skhirat agreement, Russia insisted on supplementing the relevant resolution with a provision that dialogue is to involve not only the parties present in Skhirat but also all other political forces in Libya, including General Khalifa Haftar," he said. "General Haftar visited Moscow and we informed about our approaches. We think that he can and must be a party to the political agreement."
The Russian foreign minister noted that the Russian side is maintaining contacts with all other Libyan leaders, including Prime Minister of the Government of National Accord Fayez Sarraj and President of the Tobruk-based House of Representatives Aguila Saleh. "We will continue these efforts," he pledged.
Lavrov expressed the hope that the settlement of the Libyan crisis will help stop the flow of migrants to Europe via Libya. "We understand Italy’s and other European countries’ concerns over the migration crisis," he said. "I saw statistics which demonstrate that some 170,000 migrant arrived in Italy in the eleven months of Italy. The overwhelming majority of these migrants have arrived from Nigeria, Eritrea and Guinea, and not from Syria. Notably, practically all of them have arrived via Libya which collapsed after NATO’s aggression, their bombardments in violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions.".