17-24 October: Salame remains optimistic as UN-facilitated Libyan political talks come to a standstill

Oct 25, 2017 | International actors

On 22 October, the second round of meetings in the UN-facilitated Libyan political talks concluded without setting a plan or agenda for the next gathering of the Joint Drafting Committee. UN Envoy to Libya Ghassan Salame remains enthusiastic and has emphasized that despite contention on “bottleneck” issues such as Article 8, progress was made on many points in the second round.  Salame hopes to have some sort of agreement or amendment in order before the LPA is set to ‘expire’ on 17 December.

On 23 October, the Egyptian military reported that its air force hit a convoy of eight vehicles carrying munitions near Egypt’s western border with Libya. It is reported that the strike killed the militants on board, but the official statement did not include details about the number of fatalities or which militant group was involved. The strike follows the deadly attack on Egyptian security forces southwest of Cairo on 20 October.