By Janet Ekstract
ISTANBUL- Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah expressed his enthusiasm as his nation’s Mediterranean Coastal Highway was reopened by Libya’s interim authorities after being shut down for two years during the conflict in the North African nation. Dbeibah commented: “I am so delighted to participate in the opening of this essential lifeline linking the east of our country to its west” while the U.S. embassy in Libya lauded the reopening in a tweet, commenting that it’s: “paving the path for Libyans to have full control over their own affairs.”
The good news comes on the heels of the second Berlin Conference on Libya to meet this week on June 23 to be hosted by Germany and the U.N. Reopening the coastal highway has been an ongoing demand by the U.N. to allow the safe movement of civilians and goods. The highway closed in April 2019 after renegade and military commander Khalifa Haftar attempted to capture Libya’s capital Tripoli. Since the interim government took power in February, a gradual return to normalcy in the North African nation is viewed as a sign that Libya is on the road to stability. Evidence of that is the number of embassies that have recently reopened in Libya as well as a resumption of international flight routes previously closed for years.
It is expected that Wednesday’s conference will jump-start talks on preparations for general elections set to take place on December 24. Another major priority for discussion is withdrawal of foreign forces from the country where analysts report at least 20,000 foreign fighters still remain. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya, (UNSMIL) the U.N., the international community and the U.S. administration have all expressed their concerns about foreign forces still remaining in Libya. A major goal for the Berlin Conference is to attempt to resolve this ongoing thorny issu
