UN proposes unity government for Libya

Heba Saleh in Cairo

United Nations envoy for Libya, Bernardino Leon (C), holds a press conference in the Moroccan city of Skhirat on October 8, 2015, announcing Libya has agreed to form a new national government. Libya, which plunged into chaos after the fall of Moamer Kadhafi in 2011, has had two rival parliaments vying for power as well as several groups battling for control of the country's vast resource wealth. AFP PHOTO / STR-/AFP/Getty Images©AFP

UN envoys for Libya at a press conference in Moroccan city of Skhirat

The United Nations has proposed a new unity government for Libya, after months of mediation between rival administrations in the east and west of the country.

Bernardino Leon, the UN special envoy for Libya, announced the make-up of the proposed government in the early hours of Friday morning after talks with representatives of both sides in the Moroccan resort of Skhirat.

The unity government still has to be approved by the internationally-recognised House of Representatives in the eastern city of Tobrouk, and its rival General National Congress backed by Islamist-leaning militias in Tripoli in the west.

Libya has been split between two governments since last year and armed militias under the control of neither administration hold sway over large swaths of territory.

Hardliners on both sides who believe they can gain more by fighting have been trying to torpedo an agreement. Though represented at the dialogue, the GNC did not propose names for the new government and is still holding out for amendments to a draft peace plan set to be adopted before an October 20th deadline.

“The GNC as you know decided yesterday not to propose names and to ask for more changes in the text,” said Mr Leon. “The international community has been very clear that after huge efforts to adopt the text, two successive rounds of amendments, it is not possible to continue to do this, because this will be an endless process.”

The proposed government will be headed by Fayez Sarraj, a member of the HOR from Tripoli, as prime minister. He is to be supported by a presidential council that includes three deputy prime ministers, from the east, west and south of the country, and by two senior ministers, one of them from the GNC.

The six are to “work as a team”, said Mr Leon, and would rotate in representing Libya internationally.

He made clear that while he was aware that the agreement did not answer the concerns of all sides, it was Libya’s best hope to reach a peaceful settlement and end the debilitating divisions that have left 2.4m Libyans in need of humanitarian assistance.

Diplomats and analysts fear that failure to reach an agreement soon would entrench the division of the country and hasten its descent into chaos. Already, Isis, the militant group, has found a foothold in central Libya where it controls the coastal city of Sirte. People smugglers have taken advantage of the power vacuum to send thousands of illegal migrants to Europe on boats crossing the Mediterranean.

Oil-rich Libya has been burning through its foreign currency reserves and hydrocarbons production has plummeted to a quarter of what it was before the ousting of Muammer Gaddafi, the former dictator, in 2011./ Financial Times