CAIRO — Cairo hosted another two-day meeting bringing together members of the Libyan House of Representatives to discuss the country’s political crisis. The Oct. 18-19 summit was held in anticipation of a UN-sponsored conference in Berlin scheduled for early November to settle the crisis. The meeting’s concluding statement noted that it was a continuation of the first one held in Cairo July 13, “in light of conditions that made it hard for parliament to operate normally, particularly since the pressure exerted on its administration and the attempt to divide and thwart it increased,” in reference to the pro-Government of National Accord (GNA) lawmakers who defected in May in protest against the offensive it launched in April against the pro-GNA armed groups in Tripoli.
A day prior to the meeting, the pro-GNA members of parliament announced that they would not partake in it. They wrote in a Oct. 16 statement of which Al-Monitor secured a copy that Egypt is not an appropriately neutral party to sponsor the initiative.