Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA) hopes that the Russian-Turkish agreement on a ceasefire in Syria will have a positive impact on the situation in the North African country, GNA Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj has told Sputnik
CAIRO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th April, 2020) Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA) hopes that the Russian-Turkish agreement on a ceasefire in Syria will have a positive impact on the situation in the North African country, GNA Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj has told Sputnik.
"We hope that the Russian-Turkish agreement on Syria will reflect positively on the situation in Libya, and this can be achieved, as Russia has contact with the other side and impact on it," Sarraj said.
Sarraj added that the GNA maintained contact with Moscow, recalling that he had visited the Russian capital several times.
"Our contact with Moscow was not interrupted, [and] I visited Moscow several times. Talks on the second meeting [between the two Libyan warring parties] were not held, and they have been postponed because of the circumstances that the countries worldwide are going through," the GNA's prime minister said.
On March 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, held talks in Moscow amid an escalation in violence in Syria's Idlib province. The parties agreed to an immediate ceasefire and the establishment of joint military patrols, as agreed previously at their meeting in Sochi in September 2018.
After the ouster and assassination of Libya's long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi, Libya was plunged into a brutal civil war. As of now, the country is torn between the two main centers of power � an elected parliament in the country's east, supported by the Libyan National Army (LNA), and the GNA in the country's west.
In late January, the Russian government invited both opposing leaders, GNA's Sarraj and LNA's Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, to Moscow. Sarraj signed up to the ceasefire deal proposed by Russia and Turkey, while Haftar did not.
