With the arrival of the participants to the Forum for Political Dialogue in Tunisia, Libyans wonder how similar this meeting is to previous dialogues sponsored by the UN mission to resolve the crisis, and there are concerns that the current dialogue will be another version of the Skhirat Agreement.
The efforts of the UN mission
The United Nations mission is still continuing to solve the crisis after years of political differences between the parties, and with tens of official sessions and hundreds of meetings, it is now able to bring the different parties together at one table in Tunisia, but what is the difference between the last dialogue and the previous ones?
Skhirat Agreement and the emergence of Al-Sarraj
Today, Libyans are wondering about the differences that the UN mission made this time in its gathering of the parties since the indirect meetings started since late 2014 in order to reach an understanding formula between the members of Parliament attending the sessions in Tobruk and their boycotting, and then it extended to include mayors of municipalities and other party leaders, including independent personalities in addition to the members of the previous national conference, which has since become a major party in the dialogue in meetings hosted by several countries and cities, starting from Ghadames to Tunis, then Geneva, Algeria and New York to Skhirat, and in which, in mid-December 2015, a political agreement was signed in the presence of most of the parties.
The aforementioned produced the Presidential Council of the Government of National Accord and revived the National Conference under the name of the High Council of State as an advisory body in addition to the House of Representatives, however, a dispute arose over some of the terms of the agreement.
The division continues and the dialogue sessions return
The Libyan crisis was not resolved even with the Skhirat Agreement, and the House of Representatives did not give confidence to the reconciliation government, and the interim government continued to carry out its work in eastern Libya and Al-Wefaq in the west of the country, delegating its ministers with international support.
The Paris meeting … Haftar is a political party
In the following year, French President Emmanuel Macron was able to gather the Libyan opponents at one table in Paris during which Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar met with the President of the Presidency, Fayez al-Sarraj, in July 2017, with the aim of facilitating a political agreement between the two parties and finding a consensus on a unified army, but the meeting was nothing but a photo-taking ceremony. No more, as the Libyans described it, and nothing was implemented on the ground, while the meeting gave Field Marshal Haftar international legitimacy as a political opponent and not just a commander of the army forces.
Palermo conference … Photo ceremony
The Paris meeting stimulated Rome to hold a wider meeting this time in the Italian city of Palermo on the island of Sicily in mid-November 2018 to which the heads of the political bodies, the representatives and the supreme state and the Presidential Council were invited, in addition to the army commander, along with the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia, in the presence of delegations from 38 countries, including Algeria, Russia and the United States, and the head of the support mission, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, and representatives of the European and African Union, while the meeting did not bring anything new about the Paris meeting that preceded it except a forum in which the parties met to take pictures, and observers stated that the Italian meeting is part of the competition over the influence between Rome and Paris, as it led to the naming of armed groups and the demand for their dissolution.
Abu Dhabi meeting … understandings that did not last
The UN mediation did not stop at this point and organized in coordination with the UAE Foreign Ministry in March 2019 a meeting between Al-Sarraj and Haftar, in which the two parties were said to have made remarkable progress in the talks, in the presence of Salama alongside Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, while no official and announced decisions were issued from the meeting.
Tripoli war … and stalled international efforts
At the time, the UN mission was preparing to hold a comprehensive Libyan national meeting in the city of Ghadames in mid-April of the same year, and ten days before this date, and on the fourth of the same month, the National Army announced the launch of a military operation south of Tripoli with the aim of removing the armed groups from it, and here the horizon became blocked by the situation and increased The crisis was a complexity, while the international division over Libya was evident. Then Berlin began to announce that it would organize a conference that brings together the Libyan and international parties involved in the Libyan issue, but the meeting was delayed for months.
Moscow meeting … Haftar leaves without signing
A few days before the date of the upcoming Berlin conference, on the fourteenth of January of this year, and in the most recent meeting between the parties, the President of the Presidency Council, Fayez Al-Sarraj, met with Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in Moscow under the auspices of Russia and Turkey, with the aim of reaching a peace agreement. After a lengthy meeting, which lasted for about seven hours, the “parties” did not emerge, with a clear agreement that satisfied either of them. Al-Sarraj signed the draft of the Moscow agreement, while Haftar left the meeting without signing.
Berlin conference … pledges to stop arms flow to Libya
After the Moscow meeting between Haftar and Al-Sarraj, the opportunity became ripe for Berlin, which at the time German Chancellor Angela Merkel adopted a new method to try to solve the Libyan crisis, as it called on the permanent members of the UN Security Council, given that the Libyan file falls under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. That is, under the supervision of the Security Council. Other countries related to the conflict, attended by it, produced a draft, which the attendees signed, urging the two parties to cease fire and end foreign intervention on the ground. While the parties to the Libyan crisis did not sit at that meeting at one table, but the participating countries signed pledges to stop arms exports to the parties to the conflict and stop military campaigns and support.
The Berlin conference was considered one of the most important meetings for the political settlement of the Libyan crisis, although it did not result in any political agreement. Clear about the crisis, except for the fragile ceasefire. Which was quickly breached until the army withdrew from the western regions of the country and stationed in the borders of the Sirte – Al Jufra regions in early June.
Salame’s resignation … and the army’s withdrawal from southern Tripoli
The withdrawal of the army from the western regions of Libya and the concentration of the two parties to the armed conflict on the outskirts of Sirte – Al-Jufra coincided with a torrent of events, including the submission of the UN envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, of his resignation in March and the outbreak of the Corona virus, which the Libyans faced with a fragile health system and a wide institutional division, as well as the main statements of the Parliament And the presidential ceasefire in Libya, and then the understandings of the resumption of oil production and export between Vice Presidential Ahmed Maitiq and the National Army, which made the political climate ready for the conclusion of understandings.
A favorable political environment for the resumption of negotiations
After a series of meetings between the Libyan political and military parties in a number of cities, including Bouznika, Morocco, Montreux, Switzerland, Cairo and Hurghada, Egypt, the climate has become favorable for the UN mission led by Stephanie Williams, acting on behalf of … where dozens of meetings were held with the aim of facilitating the huge political meeting that paved the way for him to organize a meeting of the Joint Military Committee 5 +5, which announced that it had reached a permanent ceasefire agreement, leading to arrangements for the Libyan Political Forum to be hosted in Tunisia, and organized a number of virtual meetings that included women, youth and political figures, and adopted in choosing the Forum for Political Dialogue a list of 75 personalities representing various Libyan parties, and the goal is to reach a consensual formula that leads to the selection of a miniature Presidency Council with a president and two deputies and the choice of a separate prime minister in a new transitional period of limited duration and goals to reach presidential and parliamentary elections on a constitutional basis that ends years of division and suffering.
