Cairo The Troika summit and Libya’s African Union Committee on Tuesday called for an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Libya”.
This came in the final communique of the summit held in Cairo with the participation of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the current chair of the African Union; Rwandan President Paul Kagame; and South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa (AU Troika members); as well as President of the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso, chairman of the AU High-Level Committee on Libya; and Chairperson of the AU Commission Moussa Faki.
The leaders called on all Libyan parties to “exercise restraint, respect the safety of civilians and facilitate humanitarian access to all areas of Libya”, stressing the pivotal role of the African Union and member states in addressing the current crisis in Libya.
In this regard, the summit called on UN Special Envoy for Libya Ghassan Salame to cooperate fully with the African Union and intensify his consultations with all parties in Libya, without exception, in a framework of full transparency and cooperation with the Troika and the African Union.
The communique demanded the international community to shoulder its responsibility to stop the smuggling of arms, fighters and terrorists into Libya, end illegal immigration and human smuggling and stop all forms of foreign intervention that seek to turn Libya into a proxy conflict arena aimed at depleting the resources of the Libyan people.
It also asserted the continued commitment of the Troika to intensify its engagement with all the Libyan parties in the next stage to reach a Libyan political solution under the auspices of the UN and in line with the relevant AU mechanisms.
During the summit, the leaders reviewed the latest developments in Libyan arena, where they discussed the importance of the historical relations between Libya and the AU countries and the commitment to support the stability, unity and territorial integrity of Libya. They also discussed ways of resuming political negotiations on the basis of the Libyan Political Agreement, which would enable the unification of the state legitimate institutions (the Presidential Council, the Council of Representatives, the High Council State and the Libyan National Army) and to prepare them to carry out their full responsibilities in expressing the popular will.
The leaders stressed the importance of enabling the army to fulfill its duty to preserve Libya’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity by ending the chaos of militias and putting the weapons only in the hands of the military and regular police forces to enable them to carry out their duty to maintain security and stability and eliminate terrorism and related external interference in Libyan affairs and the depletion of the people’s resources.
Source: International Islamic News Agency