Warring sides in Libya still stick to the truce although their leaders aren’t into direct talks so far, Sergey Lavrov confirmed. It is crucial that they don’t set additional demands after a peace summit in Berlin.

The ceasefire between Libyan National Army (LNA) and the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) “is nevertheless respected,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow, describing it as “a definite step forward.”

General Khalifa Haftar, who leads LNA, and Fayez al-Sarraj, GNA’s Prime Minister, have previously failed to reach an agreement at a recent talks in Moscow. The next peace summit on Libya is set to take place in Berlin this Sunday.

Lavrov observed that there is some hope for success if both rivals manage to come to terms:

The main thing now is that after the Berlin conference, if everything goes as planned, the Libyan parties do not repeat their previous mistakes and do not begin to put forward additional conditions, and blame each other

So far, it’s unlikely that Haftar and al-Sarraj could talk or meet with each other as the relationships between them are “very tense.” Both leaders “don’t even want to be in the same room,” the minister revealed.

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Source: RT