UNITED NATIONS: After more than six months of squabbling, the UN Security Council has agreed to name a new special envoy for Libya and a "coordinator" who will be second in command, diplomats said Friday.
The Council will vote early next week on a draft resolution that would renew the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) until September 15, 2021 and spell out the leadership structure.
The draft, seen by AFP, says the Council had decided "UNSMIL should be led by a Special Envoy of the Secretary-General... with a particular focus on good offices and mediation with Libyan and international actors to end the conflict."
Under the envoy's authority, "an UNSMIL Coordinator shall be in charge of UNSMIL's day-to-day operations and management" of its roughly 200 staff, the text says.
The Council will ask Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to "appoint his Special Envoy without delay," according to the document.
UN Libya envoy Ghassan Salame stepped down in March for health reasons, and bickering between the United States and its partners on how the role should be defined has stalled naming a successor.
Guterres had tapped former Algerian foreign minister Ramtane Lamamra, but Washington nixed his nomination for reasons that were not made public.
The UN chief then turned to former Ghanaian minister Hanna Serwaa Tetteh but the US again rejected it, asking that the post be split in two - a political envoy and a boss for the UN mission, as is the situation for Cyprus or Western Sahara.
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