By Hadi Fornaji
Tunis, 15 Septmber 2016:
Delegates from across the country have been heading to Nalut in the far western Jebel Nafusa, near the Tunisian border, for a conference on Friday on national reconciliation.
A number of delegates flew in today from Tobruk to Zintan while others drove over from Tunisia.
The conference is being organised under the auspices of the municipal council in Nalut, which has earned itself the reputation of being relatively impartial in Libya’s current divide. The gathering also has the support of Zintan municipality and the Libyan National Army’s head of its Tripoli operations room, Colonel Idris Madi. He was at Zintan airpott today to welcome arriving delegates from the east.
It is reported, though, that the Presidency Council’s defence minister Mahdi Al-Barghathi ordered a stop to the conference on the grounds that security could not be assured, but the organisers ignored him.
Delegates are expected to attend from Misrata and Tripoli.
It was reported earlier today that there has been a row over the planned attendance by David Jerbi, the Rome-based psychologist and political activist who is Jewish and originally from Tripoli. Having issued an invitation to him to the conference, Nalut municipality is now allegedly saying he is not welcome, apparently on the basis that he is Jewish.
