By Olfa Andolsi.
Tunis, 8 December 2017:
The Presidency Council’s foreign minister Mohamed Taher Siala is to visit Moscow on Monday to brief his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the situation in Libya according to media reports in the Russian capital.
“Siala plans to meet with Lavrov on December 12,” the Russian news agency Sputnik quoted a representative of the Libyan embassy in Russia as saying.
There has been no confirmation of the visit from the foreign ministry in Tripoli.
Siala was last in Moscow during Faiez Seraj’s visit there last March, although he and Seraj last met Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in September. Just days before that PC member Ahmed Maetig was in the Russian capital but he had talks with Laviov’s deputy, Mikhail Bogdanov, who has day-to-day oversight of Russian relations with Libya.
Moscow tries to take what it calls an even-handed approach to Libya favouring neither the PC nor administration in the east. Siala’s counterpart in the Beida-based interim government, Mohamed Dayri had talks with Bodanov in early September and, prior to that, in June. Betwee those two visits, Khalifa Hafter was in Moscow in August to discuss the situation in Libya with Lavrov.
