Dubai:
A former political advisor to the United Nations has said a solution in Libya is possible but that Europe needs to stop buying oil from the North African country.
“Regional polarisation in Libya and the European greed for Libyan oil … burdens the politics,” said Gassan Salame, now a professor of International Relations at Sciences Po (Paris) and also a former Lebanese Minister, in Dubai on Sunday.
Salame, speaking at the Arab Strategy Forum, called on more social initiatives as a means of curbing the influence of Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, in the region.
Since May, Libya has been engulfed in a civil war between moderate and Islamist forces fighting for power over the oil-producing North Africa state.
Libya’s Central Bank controls revenues generated from the roughly one million barrels of oil produced each month. Salame said armed groups in Libya are pressuring the Central Bank to hand over the oil revenues.
Ahmad Abu Al Geit, a former minister of foreign affairs of Egypt under ousted president Hosni Mubarak, said the only solution in Libya was foreign intervention.
“The situation will not change and [division] of Libya is very possible … the situation will not change unless the state returns and in order to bring the state back, there has to be an external intervention,” he said at the forum, sitting alongside Salame.
Al Geit, warning of the increasing threats of Islamist fighters in Africa including Boko Haram in Nigeria, dismissed the idea of social initiatives being used to start a reconciliation process in Libya.
“These initiatives, their problem is they did not take into consideration the 20-year-old young man carrying a [gun] that would not allow anyone to talk to him. This young man must be stopped,” he said.
