Excerpts from Leon’s Press Conference on Military Operations in Libya Today, Friday 20 March 2015

21 Mar 2015

Excerpts from Leon’s Press Conference on Military Operations in Libya Today, Friday 20 March 2015

I have called you because in the last few hours we have seen a number of statements coming from personalities in Libya, together with some military movements on the ground, which represent a serious threat which will condition this dialogue. The United Nations wants to call on both the political actors and the military actors to stop such actions.

The United Nations wants to call on political, on military actors to stop such actions. This is going to have not only an impact on what we are trying to do here. It will have an impact on the reality on the life of the Libyans. It will have an impact on the region.

It is an activity which is not acceptable, which the international community cannot accept, and all the more when we have seen Libyans from both camps in recent days fighting terrorism, fighting Daesh. This is an opportunity for the Libyans to unite. This is an opportunity for the Libyans to continue working with the dialogue for a political solution. We believe that these statements and these actions seriously hamper the possibility of a political agreement…

A negotiation in which you are dealing with very different issues, you can make progress on some of them and it does not mean necessarily you will succeed when you address the most difficult ones.
We are this weekend discussing an agenda with security arrangements and with criteria for the government. As I explained this morning at this conference if we managed to reach an agreement on these points Sunday we will start negotiations which could be even more difficult which is the one about the specific members of the future unity government.

So it is a gradual approach addressing issues from, let’s say, nothing is easy but from the easier ones to the more difficult ones. So it is difficult to say if. We are making progress, no doubt. We have been discussing today and cleaning some of the documents, but we have to be very cautious. We have to wait until the end to really know whether this will succeed or not.

At the same time, what is clear is that these actions on the ground will have an impact on the dialogue. If this is not a major operation, if this is just one more fighting, as I said this morning, then maybe we can continue tomorrow working and trying to make progress on the other issues. If it is a major operation then it will clearly have an impact on the dialogue. It will seriously question the possibilities to continue working in the coming days. But at this stage we cannot say. The only thing we can do at the moment is to call on all of them to be responsible, to support the peace efforts here in Skhirat.


Click here to watch the complete press conference