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By Libya Herald staff.
Tunis, 25 June 2015:
Delegates to the UN-brokered Dialogue have started returning in the Moroccan resort of Skhirat for the . . .[restrict]next session although it is not known precisely when the talks will resume. There were reports that they would start today and the delegates from the General National Congress in Tripoli arrived early this morning in Skhirat. However, those from the House of Representatives are still in Libya.
“We’re not sure when they will start,” an official in Skhirat said, putting the delay partly down to Ramadan and flight difficulties. “But they will, sooner or later,” he stated.
One independent delegate, speaking to the Libya Herald this afternoon, said he hoped to fly to Morocco this evening adding that others were others still in Libya. He had not been informed precisely when the dialogue would resume, he said. “Possibly Friday, possibly Saturday”. It was still open-ended. “We’ve trained them to become Libyans,” he joked about the UN team’s sense of timing.
More seriously, the delegate, who did not want to be named, was pessimistic about the chances of success at the talks which UN envoy Bernardino Leon has said should be final. The changes to Draft No. 4 proposed by the House of Representatives (HoR) yesterday had torpedoed it, the delegate claimed.
“What they are asking for is impossible,” he said. “They are putting up roadblocks. They are doing everything to prevent it [the Draft] from happening.”
Early yesterday morning, the HoR voted to accept Draft 4 but subject to certain amendments. One is that the number of members of the 120-seat State Council selected from those in the General National Congress be reduced from 90 to 45. Congress had originally demanded it be given all 120 seats and considered the 90 allocated to it in Draft No. 4 to be a compromise. Another is that it be seated in Sebha and be purely consultative.
HoR say that they, the elected body, are being asked to make to many concessions to a GNC that had resumed power via the guns of Libya Dawn.
It is thought, however, that its delegates will turn up in Skhirat by Saturday, although talks then may be short.
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