Libya Arms Embargo Has Become a ‘Joke,’ Top UN Official Says
(Bloomberg) -- A senior United Nations official called the arms embargo on Libya a “joke” as governments struggled to hold together efforts to end a civil war in the North African country.
Germany on Sunday hosted a meeting of top officials in Munich, who expressed concern about “the deplorable recent violations” of the Libyan weapons embargo, while reaffirming the conclusions of a summit in Berlin last month. The goal is to end a conflict between Fayez al-Sarraj, Libya’s UN-backed prime minister, and his rival General Khalifa Haftar.
But prospects for progress are bleak, a circumstance illustrated by those who didn’t attend. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who was in the German city for the Munich Security Conference, sent a more junior official. U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who left the conference a day earlier, dispatched the deputy assistant secretary of state for the Maghreb and Egypt.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas acknowledged that the Berlin summit had failed to achieve much progress and success won’t be a “simple task.” Stephanie Williams, a UN deputy special envoy who attended the meeting, was more blunt.
“The arms embargo has become a joke,” Williams said. “We all really need to step up here,” four weeks after leaders pledged to halt weapons deliveries and work toward a cease-fire. “Libya is awash in weaponry, and now advanced weaponry,” she said, citing violations “by land, sea and air.”
The Libyan civil war, triggered 10 months ago by Haftar’s march on Tripoli, has killed more than 2,000 people and exploded into a proxy conflict drawing regional and global powers. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have been backing Haftar, who is also supported by Russian mercenaries, while Turkey has been sending troops and supplies to the internationally recognized government.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought a diplomatic victory by inviting leaders of the competing sides to Berlin on Jan. 19, but the hard-won truce fell apart almost immediately -- pushing political and economic talks ever further into the distance.
A joint military committee aiming to lock in a permanent cease-fire will meet in Geneva from Feb. 18. The German government convened the first “follow up” committee to inch forward the accord struck in Berlin and Maas was joined in the Bavarian capital by foreign ministers from Turkey, Egypt, France and Italy and the European Union’s high representative.
“Despite all the areas where we haven’t reached our goal, the path that we’ve chosen is functioning and the diplomatic engagement in the past days has been effective,” Maas told reporters.
(Updates with Williams quotes from fourth paragraph)
To contact the reporters on this story: Patrick Donahue in Munich at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net;Samer Khalil Al-Atrush in Munich at skhalilalatr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Iain Rogers
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