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By Sami Zaptia.
London, 19 October 2018:
The spokesperson of the General Command of the Khalifa Hafter-led Libyan National Army (LNA), Brigadier General Ahmed Mesmari, reported today that the Cairo meetings of the unification committees of the Libyan army continued under the patronage of Egypt.
He said that the meeting confirmed what had been agreed in previous meetings, namely that the LNA General Command, led by Haftar, is, what he called, “the main facade of the Libyan National Army”. Mesmari did not elaborate what this entails in practice.
Mesmari also said that the formation of the three Command Councils: the National Security Council; the Supreme Defence Council and the General Command Council, was were all agreed upon at the Cairo meeting.
He also said that the Cairo meeting had reached agreement on the organizational structure, tasks and duties assigned to each of the three councils.
Moreover, without elaborating on details, Mesmari also said that the meeting made “some proposals to address the problem of armed militias deployed in the western region”.
Finally, he refuted media claims that Egypt had attempted to impose its own initiative at the meeting, saying that “no new developments or initiatives have been discussed by the Egyptian side, such as what is rumored in the media, such as the formation of a military council and the names of its members”.
At the time of writing there has been no confirmation of this alleged progress from other sources present at the Cairo talks.
However, if what Mesmari is claiming is accurate, it would constitute major positive movement in the attempts to reunify Libya’s military institutions and doing away with its militias.
