Libya's UN-Backed Government Hopes US-Haftar Meeting Can Stop Offensive On Tripoli

Libya's UN-Backed Government Hopes US-Haftar Meeting Can Stop Offensive on Tripoli

Libya's Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) believes that a recent meeting between US officials and head of the Libyan National Army (LNA), Khalifa Haftar, could help stop LNA's Tripoli campaign, Hassan Alsideeg, the deputy for policy planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Libya, told Sputnik

ROME (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th December, 2019) Libya's Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) believes that a recent meeting between US officials and head of the Libyan National Army (LNA), Khalifa Haftar, could help stop LNA's Tripoli campaign, Hassan Alsideeg, the deputy for policy planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Libya, told Sputnik.

The US State Department said in November that senior US officials had met with Haftar to talk about his offensive on Tripoli. According to Haftar, the campaign, launched in April, aims to clear the GNA-controlled territory of terrorist groups. The UN-backed government responded to the campaign with a counteroffensive.

"We think it's a good sign. If it leads to stopping the aggression against Tripoli and bringing him [Haftar] back to the political dialogue and political solution, we see it as a good sign. We take it so and we wish that the US manages to persuade him to stop this aggression, because it is useless," Alsideeg said on the sidelines of the MED 2019 conference in Rome.

The diplomat remarked that the campaign gave the Islamic State terrorist group (banned in Russia) "space and time" to restore its positions in southern Libya.