Counterphase: Haftar requests the return of Ambassador Giuseppe Perrone to Libya and Italy appoints Giuseppe Maria Buccino Grimaldi as new ambassador. Perhaps Haftar and Al Serraj meet in Brussels

(by Massimiliano D'Elia) Yesterday the Council of Ministers decided to designate the new Italian ambassador to Tripoli, Giuseppe Maria Buccino Grimaldi while Giuseppe Perrone will take on the role of new ambassador to Theran.

The Ambassador was recalled to Rome last summer following controversies with General Haftar over the declarations on the Libyan elections that should have been held on 10 December, following the agreements, never signed, in Paris between Macron, Haftar and Al Serraj. Ambassador Perrone told the press that the elections of 10 December were not appropriate as the security conditions necessary for truly democratic voting did not exist. All this, fortunately and skill of Italian diplomacy, went up in smoke thanks to the Palermo summit which sanctioned a shared "road map", under the aegis of the UN: a Libyan general assembly at the end of January and elections in May 2019. the name of Ambassador Buccino is not very welcome to General Kalifa Haftar who, on several occasions, has asked Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte for Ambassador Perrone to return to Tripoli. Haftar believes that Ambassador Buccino is very close to the Muslim Brotherhood of Misrata which is politically opposed to the Benghazi sub-government.

In this regard, to better understand the Italian criticalities in Libya, it is good to know in January 2017 the Italian embassy was the first to reopen its headquarters in Tripoli with Ambassador Giuseppe Perrone. The senior diplomat is an Arabist, an excellent connoisseur of the whole region and in particular of Libyan affairs. He has always had excellent relations with Fayez Al Serraj and the militias close to him, often going against the phase with Bengasi (Gen. Haftar) and, as Il Sole 24Ore points out, with various acronyms of the Italian intelligence that in the Libyan territory have moved in recent times with excessive ease to the point of almost prefiguring a sort of "parallel foreign policy".

Here, then, a question of "dispettucci" of Italian domestic politics is triggered.

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini welcomed Perrone's return to Libya because, now, he was asked by Haftar. Salvini, at the same time, did everything to change the top management of Aise and Dis, bringing forward their deadline scheduled for April 2019. This, in order to have a line of continuity with the new Italian strategy of unconditional support to all the actors who they really count on the ground in Libya. 

The appointment of Ambassador Buccino smacks of "spite" for the recent declaration by the Italian Interior Minister in favor of Israel against Hezbollah. Declaration, which according to Defense Minister Elisabetta Trenta, would have endangered the Italian soldiers employed in the Unifil mission in Lebanon. Returning to Libya, it is now hoped that the good relations cultivated with difficulty and distrust with those who really command on the ground, General Kalifa Haftar, will not be compromised, again, for a mere whim within the yellow-green government. The analysis just made of the appointment of ambassadors in Libya and Iran could be the result of a suggestion, however doubts remain due to the timing of the measures, after Salvini's declaration in Israel.

Another absolute novelty is the revelation made by Il Sole24Ore: today there could be a meeting between General Khalifa Haftar and Fayez al Serraj in Brussels. However, no one has yet confirmed the meeting.

There is also a new mystery, not much publicized: the death yesterday in a Roman hospital of the Libyan general SalahAI Samui, a former security chief from Tripoli, shot last month in the Libyan capital. The general had been the victim of unspecified "armed men" who shot him in front of his home in the southern part of Tripoli.

Counterphase: Haftar requests the return of Ambassador Giuseppe Perrone to Libya and Italy appoints Giuseppe Maria Buccino Grimaldi as new ambassador. Perhaps Haftar and Al Serraj meet in Brussels