By Sami Zaptia.
Tripoli, 19 August 2014:
Those who carried out the air strikes early yesterday morning targeted the parties that did not . . .[restrict]agree to a cease fire, said Abubaker Baera the former President of the House of Representatives (HoR).
Baera did not elaborate as to who he thought might have been responsible for the air strikes carried out in the early hours of Monday morning. However, the implication and tone of his comments did not give the impression that he objected to the air strikes. He certainly did not condemn it.
Equally, his prognosis that the air strikes had only targeted those who did not agree to the ceasefire may signify his tacit approval or even his prior knowledge of them.
The HoR members were hoping that the warring parties in Libya would respond to the demand for a cease fire and that they would reach peaceful solution so as to save Libyan blood and not to allow things to evolve to what might have dire consequences, Baera added.
The HoR member, however, stressed that when the HoR invited the international community for help, it was an unspecified invitation for help to end the clashes between the militias and was not a request for military intervention. It was a request for political or peaceful intervention to reach a cease fire, he claimed.
Baera said that he had hoped that Libyans would understand the difficulties of the ongoing fighting and that they would return to the voice of reason and wisdom and resolve their problems among themselves, especially since the warring parties were brothers in arms fighting together in the front against the former regime.
Returning to the same theme and what came across as an attempt to lay the blame on one of the two warring blocs, Baera repeated that one side was not responding to HoR requests for a cease fire which has evolved matters to what may have dire consequences – with the appearance of striking aircraft – the source of which is unknown, he stressed.
However, offering a possible rational to the strikes, Baera said that he felt that it seems that these unknown sources of striking aircraft saw that the situation in Libya between the fighting militias was getting worse and getting out of control and wanted to impose a solution to this situation and therefore targeted the parties that had refused from the beginning to agree to a cease fire.
Reports of the air strikes as well as the report of the Chief of Staff indicate that the strikes were precise, causing much damage to weapons but little deaths. The worst unconfirmed reports seem to indicate about 20 possible deaths associated with the air strikes. Independently verifying this claim has not been possible. [/restrict]
