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LONDON: Italian Special Envoy for Libya Nicola Orlando and Rome’s Ambassador in Tripoli Giuseppe Buccino Grimaldi met with Gen. Khalifa Haftar in Benghazi on Monday. 

Haftar is head of the Libyan National Army and an ally of the speaker of Libya’s eastern-based parliament, Aguila Saleh.

Libya has had little security since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ousted Muammar Qaddafi and its split in 2014 between rival eastern and western factions before a 2020 truce that brought it under Tripoli-based Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbeibah’s fragile unity government.

A plan for an election in December collapsed amid arguments among major factions and prominent candidates over the rules. In addition, the parliament, which had sided with the east during the war, moved to appoint a new administration.

Al-Dbeibah rejected the parliament’s moves, saying his administration was still valid and he would only hand over power after an election.

The parliament-appointed Prime Minister Fathi Bashagha tried to take over the government in Tripoli in May but was forced back out by Al-Dbeibah’s administration. 

The crisis risks plunging Libya back into prolonged fighting after two years of comparative peace or returning it to partition between the eastern-backed government of Bashagha and a Tripoli administration under Al-Dbeibah.

Libyan officials returned to the Egyptian capital of Cairo on Sunday for a third round of talks on constitutional amendments for elections.