UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a report released on Wednesday called on the UN Security Council to set up a “monitoring component” to operate in and around Libya’s Sirte province and compliment the Libyan-led mechanisms to monitor the ceasefire.
In the report presented to the Security Council, Guterres did not say how many UN observers would be needed for the UN mission, known as the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).
“I call on the Security Council to give UNSMIL a clear but flexible mandate, supported by additional resources, to enable the UN to fully support the deployment of UNSMIL monitors to Libya that would eventually operate in and around Sirte and other areas of it is needed, ”said Guterres.
“The UNSMIL ceasefire monitoring component would not be integrated into the ceasefire monitoring mechanism. It would instead operate in close coordination with the 5 + 5 Joint Military Commission and the joint subcommittees,” he said. This commission is made up of Libyans.
Libya’s 5 + 5 joint military commission announced last week that the road between Sirte and Misrata will be open in two weeks when mercenaries begin to withdraw from the region.
“The role of UNSMIL monitors would be limited to monitoring breaches of the ceasefire agreement reported by national monitors and other local sources,” the secretary general said.
He added: “The task would involve the participation of UNSMIL monitors in ground surveillance missions in the designated area.”
He insisted that the Libyan parties must commit themselves to protecting UN personnel, equipment and facilities.
Guterres did not say how many UN staffers could be made available to the Libyan ceasefire monitoring team. Diplomats told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that there could be as few as five.
Foreign mercenaries and weapons have flowed into the country since Putist general Khalifa Haftar launched his offensive, with Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the generals’ best suppliers. According to the UN, there are currently 20,000 foreign forces and / or mercenaries left in Libya.
The Russian Wagner group, owned by businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, a figure close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is known as one of the main groups sending mercenaries to fight in Libya.
Most of the foreign forces are concentrated around Sirte at the Jufra air base held by Haftar’s forces 500 kilometers south of Tripoli and further west in al-Watiya.
In June, the US African Command (AFRICOM) revealed that 2,000 Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group had worked with Haftar forces.
A UN report on Sudan released in January 2020 also said that many Arabs from the war-weary region of Darfur were fighting as “individual mercenaries” along with warring Libyan parties.
Libya has been ravaged by bloodshed since the death of dictator Moammar Gadhafi in a NATO-backed 2011 uprising.
A number of armed groups emerged to fill the vacuum, and many collapsed around a unity government or around eastern Haftar.
The two camps, both supported by foreign powers, fought for more than a year before Haftar was forced to withdraw.
In October, they signed a ceasefire and launched a UN-led process in which a new transitional government was installed in February to lead the war-weary country to elections on December 24 this year.
Meanwhile, forces in western Libya on Wednesday released more than 100 detainees captured during combat under Haftar’s flag, in a gesture of reconciliation following recent agreements, officials said.
The fighters, Haftar’s troops, were liberated in the coastal town of Zawiya at a televised ceremony attended by senior officials from the newly appointed transitional government.
Mohammad Younes Menfi, head of the Presidential Council, called the move an “important step” towards a national reconciliation initiative launched by the council, after bitter years of fighting between rival governments in the East and the West.
The released were seen wearing traditional white uniforms and hats at the ceremony at a football stadium before being reunited with their families.
Musa al-Koni, Deputy Chief of Staff, called for the release of all Libyan prisoners of war.
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