Putin, Erdogan Press Libyan Rivals to Sign Moscow Truce

TRIPOLI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Libya’s feuding leaders are holding talks in Moscow on Monday to sign a more lasting truce agreement after Russia and Turkey seized the initiative to try to end a conflict that was rapidly devolving into a proxy war.

The country’s United Nations-backed prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, and eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar are at the negotiations held under the auspices of the foreign and defense ministers of Russia and Turkey, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said. Turkey and Russia, which back rival sides, pushed the two leaders to accept a cease-fire that took hold shakily over the weekend, fuelling hopes of an end to nine months of fighting around the capital, Tripoli.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that a cease-fire agreement could be “signed soon.”

An end to that battle would spare Libya further fighting after years of upheaval that has left thousands dead and allowed Islamist extremists to dig in. It would also remove a key uncertainty for the oil market. Crude production in Libya, home to Africa’s largest proven oil reserves, has fluctuated as the warring sides fought over some of the country’s largest fields.

Libya has been enduring its worst violence since the 2011 NATO-backed ouster of Muammar Qaddafi, which ushered in years of instability that divided the country between rival administrations and turned Libya into a hub for migrants destined for Europe. Haftar had launched the offensive on Tripoli, which has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced tens of thousands, as the UN was laying the ground for a political conference to unite the country.

With Europe’s traditional influence eclipsed by Russia and Turkey, and the U.S. largely disengaged as the Trump administration focuses on Iran, Libya risked becoming a pawn in a proxy conflict between powers vying for dominance in the region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Erdogan had assumed increasingly assertive roles in the conflict in recent months as they jockey for influence in the Mediterranean, with Russian mercenaries backing Haftar’s forces. Turkey has sent three dozen soldiers to Libya to help train forces loyal to Sarraj and coordinate the defense of his government, according to a senior Turkish official. Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have already joined the fray.

But last week Moscow and Ankara agreed the conflict was becoming increasingly costly for them and used their leverage to press Libya’s warring leaders to accept a truce.

“Russia simply told Haftar it will stop all military assistance and he suddenly became more amenable to the Russian cease-fire initiative,” said Kirill Semenyov, a Moscow-based Libya expert. “Russia from the very beginning didn’t back Haftar to allow him to take Tripoli with the help of mercenaries, the idea was to make him more dependent on Russia’s decisions.”

Turkey’s aim is to “turn the cease-fire into a permanent cessation of hostilities and find a realistic political solution,” Emrullah Isler, Erdogan’s special envoy to Tripoli, told Hurriyet newspaper on Monday.

Tough Task
If a truce is reached, the next stop could be an international summit in Berlin on Jan. 19 meant to secure an agreement from foreign powers to stop intervening in Libya, two officials familiar with the matter said.

At a press conference in Ankara on Monday with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Erdogan said the two leaders and Putin were determined to be in Berlin for a summit “at the weekend.”

Having a formal truce trickle down to the field will be a tricky achievement. The frontlines are a patchwork of fighters on both sides, some of them only nominally under a central command, and some strongly opposed to a cease-fire. Both sides have accused the other of violating the truce that went into effect on Saturday, and serious questions remain over the ability to monitor forces and get ragtag fighters to all put-down guns.

“I think the cease-fire is a very fragile thing,” the UN envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, said in an interview on Sunday.

Russia and Turkey plan to set up a joint monitoring force to oversee the implementation of any truce, a senior Western diplomat briefed on the proposed agreement told Bloomberg. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, backers of Haftar, may also play a role, according to an Arab official.

Both asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

The brittle truce can also founder over Haftar’s demand to disarm Sarraj’s allied militias and the prime minister’s demand that his rival retreat to lines he held before launching his offensive on Tripoli in April. The fight over oil reserves will also complicate efforts to bring peace.

Haftar is a former Qaddafi-era military officer who later fell out with the autocratic leader and went into exile in the U.S. He returned to Libya after the start of the uprising and in 2014 launched a military campaign with the declared aim of routing Islamist extremists in the country’s east. His Libyan National Army, which is backed by an administration rivaling Sarraj’s, then moved on to take control of key oil facilities and gained an upper hand in Libya’s south before moving on Tripoli seeking to oust the prime minister, whose government has struggled to project itself over much of the country.

The European Union is desperate for a settlement in Libya to help ease political tensions across the bloc over rising anti-immigrant sentiment. Conte, whose own attempts to broker talks last week between the two Libyan leaders ended in embarrassing failure, met Erdogan in Ankara a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Putin in Moscow and won his support for the Libya conference in Berlin.

Source: Bloomberg Business News