By Hadi Fornaji.
Tripoli, 13 March 2015:
Delegates from the House of Representatives were not present when the latest round of the UNSMIL . . .[restrict]were held today in Skhirat, Morocco.
Two of the HoR party who were seeking to leave Tobruk for Morocco were stopped from boarding their plane by angry protestors. Abubakr Buera and Mohamed Abdulaziz, a former Libyan foreign minister, were blocked by a crowd of protestors who, a source close to the HoR told the Libya Herald were not organised by any group, but were acting spontaneously.
Another key member of the HoR delegation, Tawfiq Shuhabi (a former GNC member for Tobruk and leader of 94 Group, who was once spokesman for the National Force Alliance) is reported to be in Cairo today.
An UNSMIL spokesman admitted that there were no HoR representatives in Morocco today. However, the talks went ahead regardless. UNSMIL’s statement this evening made no specific reference to the absence of the the HoR.
Nor did UNSMIL make clear that the GNC is now insisting that that there be no preconditions to the dialogue. Somewhat seizing the initiative, the GNC has said that it will not accept any exclusion from the talks of any group from a particular party or town.
Meanwhile yesterday a session of the HoR insisted that as the parliament duly elected by Libyans last year, it should vote on any final proposals that emerged from the UNSMIL dialogue.
At the very end of last week’s talks, UNSMIL boss Bernardino Leon managed to get the HoR and GNC delegates into the same room, before they announced their joint determination to carry on talking. Today’s one-sided discussions were described as “procedural”. Leon has called for the talks to resume in Morocco next Thursday, 19 March.
At the end of today’s meeting Leon said ““We have had consultations today with the different parties. We continued our work in this dialogue on substantial issues and also on the organisation of our work. And after listening both to the participants that are here in Morocco and the ones who have to join in the coming days, the United Nations Mission has proposed to continue to work in the coming days on the different documents and the different elements in these talks with everyone going back to their respective constituencies and to meet again here in Morocco next week on Thursday”. [/restrict]
