Libya’s PM Al-Serraj, Haftar to hold talks

Libya’s eastern commander Khalifa Haftar and UN-backed Prime Minister Fayez Al-Serraj plan to meet on Tuesday for French-organized talks on a deal to resolve the country’s crisis, a diplomatic source said on Sunday.
“I know Haftar is in Paris already, Serraj is due to arrive soon. They are aiming for Tuesday,” the source told Reuters.
The two held talks in Abu Dhabi in May, the first in more than a year and a half, about a UN-backed deal Libya’s Western partners hope will end the factional fighting that has dominated Libya since the 2011 fall of Muammar Qaddafi.
Haftar has so far rejected the authority of the UN-backed government as his forces gain ground in the east of the country supported by Egypt and United Arab Emirates (UAE). French President Emmanuel Macron wants France to play a larger role in bringing Libya’s rival factions together, sources say.
Hundreds of Daesh corpses await repatriation from country
Seven months after Libyan forces defeated Daesh in the coastal city of Sirte, hundreds of bodies of foreign militants still lie stored in freezers as authorities negotiate with other governments to decide what to do with them, local officials say.
The corpses have been shipped to Misrata, a city further to the west whose forces in December led the fight to defeat Daesh in the city.
Allowing the bodies to be shipped home to countries such as Tunisia, Sudan and Egypt would be sensitive for the governments involved, wary of acknowledging how many of their citizens left to fight as militants in Iraq, Syria and Libya.
“Our team removed hundreds of bodies,” a member of the Misrata organized crime unit dealing with the bodies told Reuters, his face masked to conceal his identity because of security concerns.
“This is the main operation which allows us to preserve the bodies, document and photograph them and also collect DNA samples.”
The crime unit said it was awaiting a decision from the prosecutor general, who was in talks with foreign governments over the return of the bodies.
Daesh has now been defeated in its main stronghold in Iraq and Syria. But at the height of its territorial control, it attracted recruits from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe to its ranks.
In Tunisia alone, more than 3,000 citizens left to fight in Syria, Iraq and Libya, sources said. Tunisians who trained in militant camps in Libya carried out two gun attacks on foreign tourists in 2015 that battered Tunisia’s vital tourism industry.
Daesh took over Sirte in 2015, taking advantage of infighting between rival Libyan armed factions and using the city as a base from which to attack oil fields and other nearby towns.

Source: Arab News