The head of Libya’s U.N.-supported government on Sunday proposed holding nationwide elections to end the war in the North African country, as the forces of the rival military commander Khalifa Haftar continue their two-month-long battle to take the capital, Tripoli.
Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj told a news conference in Tripoli, the seat of his administration, that he is proposing a “Libyan forum” aimed at finding a peaceful solution to the conflict. The talks would draw up a roadmap for parliamentary and presidential elections to be held before the end of 2019.
There are fears that the battle for Tripoli could ignite a civil war on the scale of the violence after the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Libya is divided between the weak government of al-Sarraj in the west, and Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter, whose self-styled Libyan National Army holds the east and much of the south. Hifter opened a military offensive on the capital in early April, advancing on the city’s southern outskirts and clashing with militias loosely affiliated with the U.N.-recognized government.
Via Daily SabahÂ
