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• LIBYA

Factions set February election as US-brokered plan tests Haftar

A unified budget and an electoral timetable show progress toward but the Libyan National Army chief's silence raises critical questions

The rival administrations in Tripoli and Benghazi are mulling a roadmap for presidential and parliamentary elections within eight months. Benghazi-based House of Representatives speaker Aguila Saleh, along with the Tripoli-based Presidential Council chief Mohamed el-Menfi and High Council of State leader Mohammed Takala have earmarked 17 February next year as election date.

There are signs of rapprochement between the two sides. In April, they agreed a unified budget for the first time since the start of the civil war in 2014. Yet the eastern-based warlord General Khalifa Haftar, who is backed by Saleh’s HoR, has not publicly backed the election plan.

That could be because the settlement proposed by Massad Boulos, United States President Donald J Trump’s African envoy, would install Saddam Haftar as head of a new presidential council while keeping Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Dubaiba in post, prior to elections being held (AC Vol 67 No 9, A power-sharing deal – based on oil, drones and secret cash).

Boulos has negotiating with Dubaiba and Haftar for months, with Washington keen to secure access to Libya’s oil and negotiate military bases in the country (AC Vol 66 No 16, Connecting Tripoli to Trump). Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) has described Boulos’s proposal as ‘a unique and distinctive initiative’ and ‘a peaceful resolution to the political crisis’ that would pave the way for ‘holding elections as soon as possible'.

‘Libya now has a clearer set of political options with a narrowing window in which to act,’ Hanna Tetteh, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Libya, told the UN Security Council on 18 June.

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