Libya US Council Calls for Urgent US Leadership on the Worsening Libya Conflict

    WASHINGTON, DC, June 03, 2019 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The National Council on U.S.-Libya Relations is deeply concerned with the continued fighting and militarization in and around Tripoli. NCUSLR continues to reinforce that Libya's strife can ultimately be solved only through political and diplomatic means, and not by any form of military action. The current state of affairs is unacceptable from a humanitarian perspective and has left Libya - Tripoli in particular - at the mercy of force and violence and its people without safety and basic human security.

NCUSLR believes that the personification of the conflict in the figures of Serraj (head of the Government of National Accord) and Haftar (leader of the Libyan National Army) is simplistic and distracts from the root causes of the conflict in Libya. A significant driver of the ongoing conflict in Libya is the result of decades of despotism, suppression of political rights, regional marginalization, and grievances over distribution of national wealth and power. The collapsed UN-led political process has not meaningfully addressed these deep-seated issues.

NCUSLR urges the US to lead the U.N. Security Council and other interested countries to support a Security Council resolution that will protect innocent citizens of Libya from the consequences of war and move Libya to a more functional state by:

1. Enforcing an immediate ceasefire and disengagement of combating forces from within and around Tripoli.
2. The LNA must withdraw from the vicinity of Tripoli with an assurance that an internationally supervised process will be enacted to dismantle armed groups and assist police to maintain security within Tripoli.
3. To prevent further weapons proliferation in Libya, the U.S. must immediately press its allies to prevent and impede the supply of any and all support to belligerents in Libya.
4. To assure fair allocation of revenue and resources, all principal offices of the National Oil Corporation, Central Bank, Libyan Investment Authority, and other government bodies must be unified under new management and relocated to a neutral location under international supervision.
5. The political process must be returned to a democratic system operated under international supervision to ensure equal participation by all Libyan citizens. Tribal, community, and municipal leaders must participate in a national conference to determine an actionable way forward.
6. The decentralized governance of Libya must be temporarily established under the 1951 constitution (with some minor modifications) until more secure conditions permit drafting a new constitution.
7. Flowing from the 2011 U.S.-NATO-led intervention, NATO members must bear the responsibility for the deteriorating conditions in Libya and must actively participate in building a sustainable Libyan future, rather than a myopic focus of only fighting ISIS.

For more information please contact Hani Shennib, President of NCUSLR at [email protected]

The National Council on US-Libya Relations is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, dedicated to strengthening international engagement in Libya for a successful democratic transition. The Council is both a policy and project organization, putting organizational resources to work to assist Libyans on the ground, as well as to guide policy makers in Libya, the US and Europe. Capitalizing on its wide network, the Council provides the public, institutions and policymakers in the US, Europe and Libya with information and perspectives on the country.

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