By Libya Herald reporter.
Tunis, 7 September 2016:
Having visited Libya’s southern neighbour Niger yesterday, House of Representatives (HoR) President Ageela Saleh and Beida-based Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thinni moved on to Burkina Faso today.
The sub-Saharan tour is mainly build up regional support for the HoR and the Thinni administration. The African Union supports the UN-backed Presidency Council (PC) headed by Faiez Serraj and it was PC deputy Musa Koni who was invited to represent Libya at the July African summit in Kigali, not Ageela Salah was the case for the 2015 Summit is Addis Ababa.
Accompanied by the Beida minister of economy and a number of other officials, both the HoR president and Thinni were well received in Ouagadougou as they had been in Niamey and met President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré – although in a clearly diplomatic move, it was as head of parliament and not as head of state that Ageela Saleh was welcomed. He was met at the airport by the deputy president of the national assembly, Juliette Bonkoungou.
Burkina Faso, like Niger, also still maintains its embassy in Tripoli which deals with the PC’s foreign ministry.
According to the Beida office of the Libyan news agency LANA, Ageela Saleh briefed the Burkina president on the crisis in Libya, the role of the African Union and support from African states, and on what he said was “outside interference in Libyan affairs” aimed at subverting Libyan democracy. The news agency reported that President Kaboré “praised” Ageela and exhorted him to resist such foreign interference.
The visit was hardly reported by the local Burkina media.
