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Situation in Libya

Russia values contacts with all sides in Libyan conflict — UN envoy

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said that "Russia has no hidden agenda in the Libyan conflict"

Russia's Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya Valery Sharifulin/TASS

Russia's Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya

© Valery Sharifulin/TASS

THE UNITED NATIONS, January 30. /TASS/. Russia maintains contact with all sides in the Libyan conflict, calling on them to abandon aggressive tactics, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said on Thursday during a UN Security Council session on Libya.

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"Russia has no hidden agenda in the Libyan conflict," Nebenzya said. "We maintain and value our contacts with all involved parties, without taking a preference to any of them." "We make our stance in favor of political regulation known," the diplomat added. "We consistently send signals to abandon aggressive tactics in the struggle for power, stressing the importance of uniting the efforts of all responsible Libyan parties in the interest of the soonest recovery of its statehood and national institutes."

Nebenzya also expressed concern over reports of violations of the arms embargo. "We stress that any attempts to fuel the conflict by foreign players must be stopped," he noted. "Unlawful proliferation of weapons in Libya destabilizes the security situation in the country and in the Sahara-Sahel region."

On January 19, an international high-level conference on Libya took place in Berlin, with at least ten heads of state and government attending the event including Russian President Vladimir Putin. The talks were also visited by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as representatives of Algeria, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and China.

Moreover, Berlin also welcomed Prime Minister of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), Fayez al-Sarraj, and Libyan National Army (LNA) Commander Khalifa Haftar.

The conference’s final communique includes a call to ceasefire, as well as the call for foreign countries to refrain from intervening in Libya’s affairs, while it also proposes creation of a single government and launch of reforms to restore statehood. The conflict sides also agreed to establish a special ceasefire monitoring commission.

Currently, Libya has two parallel bodies of executive power: the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) headed by al-Sarraj, and Abdullah Abdurrahman al-Thani’s interim government, operating in the country’s east together with parliament and supported by Haftar’s LNA.

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