Support for a new United Nations plan to unite chaos-hit Libya's institutions and oversee an electoral process starting in the Spring were the focus of Italian premier Giuseppe Conte's talks with powerful eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar in Rome on Thursday, Conte's office said in a statement.
Conte and Haftar's talks covered follow-up to the international meeting held in Palermo earlier this month on the Libyan crisis to push the UN's Libya envoy Ghassan Salame's new plan to stabilise the oil-rich country, the statement said.
Despite stark divisions that emerged among key players in the turmoil-wracked North African nation at the 12-13 November meeting in Palermo, the UN and Italy hailed the conference as a success.
All parties at the Palermo conference had agreed to a UN conference planned for early 2019 to prepare for elections to end the crisis, Conte and Salame said after the meeting.
Libya has had rival governments in Tripoli and the east and has been riven by fighting among rival factions since the Nato-backed ouster of late dictator Muammar Gaddafi in a 2011 civil war.
Haftar, a general who leads a self-styled army, has repeatedly threatened to attack Tripoli and overrun the capital, where about 30 percent of Libyans live and where the UN-backed government is based.
