An agreement reached between Libya's UN-backed premier Fayez al-Sarraj and its powerful eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar is potentially a turning-point in stabilising chaos-stricken Libya, Italy's premier Giuseppe Conte said on Thursday.
"Technically, the accord works and seems to have been well received by Sarraj and by Haftar," Conte told reporters in Rome.
"But we need to see how it is received by all the other stake-holders and players in Libya," Conte added.
"We have worked hard for this agreement," he underlined.
Under the deal between Sarraj and Haftar brokered by the UN in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, it is understood that there will be changes to the constitution and to Libya's Presidential Council, which will also contain a 'collegiate command' from Libya's armed forces, Conte told reporters.
Presidential Council members will be cut from five currently to three, who will each represent Libya's main regions of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fazzan, while the military 'collegiate command' will contain 6-8 members including Haftar, well informed sources told Adnkronos.
At the Abu Dhabi talks hosted by UN envoy to Libya Ghassan Salame, Sarraj and Haftar also agreed to end the transitional period and hold national elections and on ways to maintain stability in the country and unify its institutions, the UNSMIL mission to Libya said in a statement.
Conte held talks in Palermo with Haftar and Sarraj on the sidelines of an international conference that Italy organised in November aimed at helping end the turmoil in Libya - which is a former Italian colony.
Salame, Russia's premier Dmitri Medvedev, European Union president Donald Tusk, Tunisian president Beji Caid Essebsi, Algeria's president Ahmed Ouyahia, Egypt's president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and France's foreign minister Yves Le Drian were also present at the meeting, Adnkronos sources said.
