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Rabat – Libyan Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibeh is expected to arrive for an official visit in Morocco Sunday, June 27.
Following Libyan Speaker of the House of Representative Aguila Saleh, visited the Moroccan capital.
Dbeibeh is expected to meet the Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita, as well as the Head of Government Saad Eddine El Othmani, according to an official statement quoted in various news reports.
The consecutive visits to Morocco of high-ranking Libyan officials is a significant indicator or reiteration of the important role that Rabat has been playing in the ongoing political process to end Libya’s decade-long political crisis.
More significantly, both visits came following Morocco’s snub of the Berlin II Conference on Libya earlier this week. In fact, Seleh came to Morocco straight from the Berlin talks, cementing Morocco’s role in giving Libya’s rival factions a platform to iron out their differences in line with last year’s Bouznika talks.
Read also: Morocco Does Not Need Western Conferences to Support Libya
Dbeibeh’s visit will see the two countries further reinforce their political and diplomatic ties. Discussions are expected to focus on the planned Moroccan-Libyan economic forum, as well as on the reopening of the Moroccan embassy in Tripoli, according to Foreign Brief.
Although Morocco was invited to attend the Berlin II Conference on Libya at the “express request” of the US, Rabat chose to forgo the event. Instead, Morocco has been a leading advocate for the ongoing intra-Libyan political dialogue.
Rabat’s “constructive mediation” efforts have been internationally recognised, as Special Envoy for Libya and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) Jan Kubis has praised Morocco’s initiative to help resolve the Libyan crisis.
Instead of participating in Western-led talks on the Libyan crisis, Morocco is apparently opting for a dialogue and confidence-building framework that puts Libyans’ concerns at the center.
Accordingly, the North African country has long called out foreign intervention in Libya and urged for the Arab League and the African Union to be more involved in facilitating genuine “inter-Libyan talks” aimed at finding a lasting solution to the country’s decade of political uncertainty.
In line with that vision, Morocco has hosted a couple of inter-Libyan meetings in recent years and months. While the 2015 meeting in Skhirat, which culminated in the much-referenced Skhirat Agreement, is the most widely acknowledged, Morocco organized throughout 2020 a series of equally significant inter-Libyan talks in the cities of Bouznika and Tangier.
Morocco hoped for the Bouznika and Tangier meetings to bring together delegations of Libya’s rivaling factions in their quest for a common ground as they clashed over how to best end a decade of war and rebuild their country.
