UN envoy says push continues toward cease-fire deal in Libya

Military officers from the warring factions are meeting in Geneva

As special representative and head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, Ghassan Salame is chairing efforts to bring warring sides in the country together. EPA

The UN's special envoy to Libya said on Thursday the country’s warring sides are working to turn a provisional ceasefire into a formal agreement as they emerged from four days of talks.

Ghassan Salame, head of the United Nations support mission in Libya, said rival military leaders are negotiating the remaining sticking points in a ceasefire deal. Those include the return of internally displaced people, the disarmament of armed groups and ways to monitor the truce.

“The ceasefire agreement is made of a number of issues, and there have been points of convergence on many points. And there are points of divergence,” Mr Salame told reporters in Geneva.

The latest round of fighting in oil-rich Libya erupted last April when eastern-based forces under the command of Field Marshal Khalifa Hafter laid siege to Tripoli in a bid to wrest power from the UN-backed Government of National Accord led by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj.

Mr Sarraj and Field Marshal Hafter both sent delegations of military officials to represent them at the Geneva talks.

The ceasefire talks come amid intensified diplomacy among world powers seeking to end the conflict that has ravaged Libya for nine years.

World powers have deplored the reality on the ground and pledged to uphold a widely flouted UN arms embargo at a peace summit last month in Berlin. But continued violations of the ban have dimmed hopes that international players in Libya can resolve the crisis.