HNEC Says Libya’s Stability Linked to Staging Elections

The head of Libya's National Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh met with President of Türkiye’s Supreme Election Council Ahmed Yener in Ankara (HNEC)
The head of Libya's National Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh met with President of Türkiye’s Supreme Election Council Ahmed Yener in Ankara (HNEC)
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HNEC Says Libya’s Stability Linked to Staging Elections

The head of Libya's National Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh met with President of Türkiye’s Supreme Election Council Ahmed Yener in Ankara (HNEC)
The head of Libya's National Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh met with President of Türkiye’s Supreme Election Council Ahmed Yener in Ankara (HNEC)

The head of Libya's National Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh, said on Saturday that staging Libya’s elections was “an important and crucial issue for the political future of Libya.”

Sayeh visited Ankara this week to learn about the Turkish experience in holding and organizing elections.

There, he met with members of Türkiye’s Supreme Election Council and its president, Ahmed Yener.

“We followed the course of the elections in Türkiye and all the technical details related to it,” Al-Sayeh said, adding that all Turkish parties had accepted the results of the latest elections due to the positive work of the Supreme Election Council.

“There is no room for peaceful deliberation on power except through the ballot boxes,” he said.

At the Council’s headquarters, Al-Sayeh noted that he inspected in Türkiye the equipment used in the field of election management and listened to presentations explaining the institutional structure of the Council, its legislations, and the systems and technical procedures by which the electoral process was managed.

In a separate development, Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, the head of Libya's Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU), pledged on Saturday to support the victims of the flood-affected areas in the east of the country.

On Saturday, the GNU and the General Electric Company (GEC) said they had completed the maintenance of the electrical network in the industrial zone within the city of Derna and restored full power to the area.

They also noted that teams from the Libyan Emergency Medicine and Support Center (EMSC) have recovered six bodies from the Wadi Umm al-Barakat area east of the city. The bodies are victims of the floods that swept through the city where a hurricane-strength storm lashed the area on September 10, devastating entire neighborhoods and sweeping thousands of people into the sea.

Meanwhile, Authorities in eastern Libya announced that six Libyan National Army (LNA) troops were killed, and eight others were wounded in an attempt to foil a “foreign-backed plot” to destabilize the city of Benghazi.

Libyan media reported that the LNA was clashing with an armed group affiliated with Mahdi al-Barghathi, who once led a brigade fighting alongside Khalifa Haftar's LNA forces before joining a Tripoli government that Haftar did not recognize.

The health minister from Libya's eastern government, Othman Abduljalil, said in a press conference on Friday that 15 people were killed during the clashes, including six LNA members and nine terrorist militants. He explained that the clashes erupted in the Salmani neighborhood between LNA members and militants of former Defense Minister Al-Mahdi Al-Barghathi.

Later, the Libyan Military Prosecutor in the eastern region, Faraj Al-Sosae, said that Al-Barghathi was seriously injured during the clashes.

“A convoy of 40 armed militants accompanying Al-Barghathi had infiltrated to Benghazi,” he said, adding that when a police unit was sent to arrest the former Defense Minister, the unit was confronted by the militants accompanying Al-Barghathi.

 

 



Berri to Asharq Al-Awsat: Resolution 1701 Only Tangible Proposal to End Lebanon Conflict

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and US envoy Amos Hochstein in Beirut. (AFP file)
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and US envoy Amos Hochstein in Beirut. (AFP file)
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Berri to Asharq Al-Awsat: Resolution 1701 Only Tangible Proposal to End Lebanon Conflict

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and US envoy Amos Hochstein in Beirut. (AFP file)
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and US envoy Amos Hochstein in Beirut. (AFP file)

Politicians in Beirut said they have not received any credible information about Washington resuming its mediation efforts towards reaching a ceasefire in Lebanon despite reports to the contrary.

Efforts came to a halt after US envoy Amos Hochstein’s last visit to Beirut three weeks ago.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri dismissed the reports as media fodder, saying nothing official has been received.

Lebanon is awaiting tangible proposals on which it can build its position, he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

The only credible proposal on the table is United Nations Security Council resolution 1701, whose articles must be implemented in full by Lebanon and Israel, “not just Lebanon alone,” he stressed.

Resolution 1701 was issued to end the 2006 July war between Hezbollah and Israel and calls for removing all weapons from southern Lebanon and that the only armed presence there be restricted to the army and UN peacekeepers.

Western diplomatic sources in Beirut told Asharq Al-Awsat that Berri opposes one of the most important articles of the proposed solution to end the current conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

He is opposed to the German and British participation in the proposed mechanism to monitor the implementation of resolution 1701. The other participants are the United States and France.

Other sources said Berri is opposed to the mechanism itself since one is already available and it is embodied in the UN peacekeepers, whom the US and France can join.

The sources revealed that the solution to the conflict has a foreign and internal aspect. The foreign one includes Israel, the US and Russia and seeks guarantees that would prevent Hezbollah from rearming itself. The second covers Lebanese guarantees on the implementation of resolution 1701.

Berri refused to comment on the media reports, but told Asharq Al-Awsat that this was the first time that discussions are being held about guarantees.

He added that “Israel is now in crisis because it has failed to achieve its military objectives, so it has resorted to more killing and destruction undeterred.”

He highlighted the “steadfastness of the UN peacekeepers in the South who have refused to leave their positions despite the repeated Israeli attacks.”