Libya in last ditch to pull back from brink of abyss

Fresh round of dialogue between Libya's warring factions are scheduled to start Thursday after a 5-day pause, giving them more time to consult plans to solve the ongoing crisis.
The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has been struggling to solve the political jigsaw puzzle in Libya by brokering peace talks, but the endless clashes and lack of genuine desire to reach a political solution might make the UN efforts fruitless.
The UNSMIL earlier said the coming talks will mainly focus on the possibilities to facilitate a unity government, thus to end the confrontations between the two rival groups.
Libya has been witnessing a frayed political process after the 2011 turmoil which toppled its leader Muammar Gaddafi. The country is now juggling two rival parliaments and governments.
According to Libya's transitional plan, the June-elected parliament, the House of Representatives (HOR), has already replaced the former interim General National Congress (GNC).
However, the armed Islamist alliance Libya Dawn, which has achieved a series of military progress since July in western Libya, backed the GNC to resume power and form its own government against the new one.
Some analysts doubt whether the talks will produce any results because hostility between the two parties has not been faded even after rounds of talks.
During the last few weeks, the HOR demanded the UN Security Council to lift the arms embargo and appointed the controversial renegade general Khalifa Haftar as commander in chief of the army.
Both moves were considered as offensive by the rival Islamist-backed parliament GNC. The GNC accused HOR of disrupting the UN-sponsored political dialogue and have carried out airstrikes on Zintan, an stronghold for the HOR forces.
Mohammad Sharif, a senior Benghazi political analyst, said the distrust runs deep between the two sides and the ongoing war is rocking the country with absence of good political sanity that could save Libya from its crisis.
"The fighting and conflict for power is mixed with tribal, regional and ideological interests. Actually the situation has proved that no political breakthroughs can come soon," Sharif said.
The UN has held several rounds of dialogue between the conflicting parties since September. Although factions had agreed on a truce, the clashes still flared around the capital Tripoli and the eastern city of Benghazi.
Although the UN envoy Leon dubbed the talks as "constructive and positive," no substantially progress were seen and recognized by the international community.
Some local media commented that the UN's best achievement so far has been to "bring Libya's rival governments in the same meeting room."
As for talks in Ghadames and Brussels, the UN mainly worked as a mediator and shuttled between Libya's different groups, trying to persuade them into forming a unity government.
However, at the previous round of talks in Morocco, the rival factions met face to face for the first time and held meeting, according to Libya's local newspaper al-Wasat.
"I would call this meeting a symbolic and historical one," said a senior analyst in Libya's official LANA agency, who declined to disclose his name.
It might reach positive outcomes if the warring factions "constantly talk in this way," he added.