Diplomacy among the "secret" Falcons. The Republic reports that a Falcon jet transported Haftar's envoys to Paris: they wanted to get France's consent to attack Tripoli. According to Libyan sources, the son of General Haftar led them. On Monday, an Italian Falcon brought Haftar instead by Italian premier Giuseppe Conte.
Friction between France and the EU
Several EU member states, led by Italy, criticized France for blocking a joint resolution calling on all warring factions in Libya to cease all hostilities and return to the negotiating table. The latest round of hostility was sparked by an all-out attack by a group that calls itself the Libyan National Army (LNA). The commander of the LNA is General Khalifa Haftar, an old adversary of the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, who lived in the United States under the protection of Washington for several decades. In 2011, following an uprising that overthrew Gaddafi, Haftar returned to Libya and launched a military campaign from the eastern city of Tobruk. Since that time, he has led the LNA in a war of attrition against the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which is based in the Libyan capital Tripoli.
Last week, Haftar launched an all-out attack to defeat GNA and take Tripoli, a move that many observers had been expecting for several months. With the LNA receiving substantial military aid from Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries, most observers expected that Haftar would be the governor of Tripoli in a few days. But his troops were unexpectedly rejected by GNA troops on Monday, and were unable to enter Tripoli from the south, as was their initial plan. Meanwhile, the EU tried to issue a joint statement on Wednesday calling on all parties to the war to lay down their arms and start negotiations. But France has blocked the draft declaration, provoking heavy criticism.
On Thursday, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini criticized France for blocking the EU declaration "for economic and commercial reasons" and warned that "he would not stand by" if France continues to support "a party that is fighting" in the Libyan civil war. Salvini argues that NATO's military intervention in Libya in 2011, strongly supported by France, was "triggered more by economic and commercial interests than by humanitarian concerns." Unlike France, which has been a strong supporter of Haftar, Italy supports the UN-backed GNA and the legitimate Libyan Prime Minister, Fayez al-Sarraj.
In the 2017, two prominent international law scholars have accused Haftar of having ordered his troops to commit war crimes. Ryan Goodman, professor and former special adviser to the General Counsel of the US Department of Defense, and Alex Whiting, a professor of law at Harvard University who served as an international prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, said that in September 2015, Haftar openly urged his troops to "take no prisoners" in battle. The Libyan warlord denies these charges against him.
The Italian strategy
The first move of the League leader is to establish relations directly with Ahmed Ornar Maitig, vice president of the Libyan national agreement and Misurata strongman. He is the leader of the troops that protect Tripoli. Maitig is the only one who can really stop Haftar. In a recent interview with the press he had said that the general of Cyrenaica "is a coup": "He wants to take control of the Libya and wants to be the head of one of his military governments, he wants to establish a junta, a real dictatorship. Stop or we will destroy him ".
When 1'8 last March Maitig came to Rome, among his various meetings, he had a very important interview with Salvini. He guaranteed to the Minister of the Interior that he would do everything to stop the arrivals of immigrants on the Italian coasts. A promise that sealed a strong understanding between the manager of the Interior Ministry and the entrepreneur of Misurata.
If the whole operation were carried out, Salvini and the Italian government would succeed in the double move: a checkmate to Macron and his friends in Cyrenaica and at the same time a guarantee that departures from the Libyan coast would be reduced. Salvini is convinced that behind the Libyan situation there are not only the economic interests of Paris. The doubt is that on the war games that are taking place in Libya one of the aims is to damage Italy by sending considerable flows of refugees.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is also active. The diplomatic staff of the Presidency of the Council keeps the channel open with John Bolton, the US national security adviser to raise the level of US pressure in an anti-Russian key and to involve the Egyptians.