US administration officials have expressed concern over the military escalation in Libya, stressing Washington’s efforts to push the political process forward in the war-torn country.
The officials, who were not identified, said the administration of US President Donald Trump is pushing towards political and economic negotiations, and limiting military interventions and arms smuggling from several states.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said that during a phone call on Monday, Trump and his Egyptian counterpart Abdul Fatah Sisi “affirmed the need for immediate de-escalation in Libya, including through a ceasefire and progress on economic and political negotiations.”
Deere added that also during Trump’s phone conversation with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, early this week, “the two leaders discussed important bilateral and regional issues.”
Trump’s telephone conversation with Sisi and Macron came five days after he discussed the Libyan war with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Political analysts said the US understands the negative repercussion of Libya’s war on the region.
However, they said Washington does not seem ready to make any serious initiative to directly intervene in the crisis.
Mirette Mabrouk, a senior fellow and director of the Egypt program at the Middle East Institute, wrote Monday, “Despite rising tensions, exacerbated by chest-thumping nationalism on the ground in Libya and in both Egypt and Turkey, there are many reasons to hope that military escalation will be avoided.”
She said Egypt’s stated position has always been for a diplomatic resolution to Libya’s war and that Sisi’s talks with Libyan National Army leader Khalifa Haftar in Cairo yielded the Cairo Declaration, a diplomatic initiative that would start a ceasefire and political negotiations and ensure the LNA’s autonomy by nullifying the 2015 UN-brokered agreement that led to the creation of the Government of National Accord (GNA).
“Turkey isn’t particularly heavily invested in terms of actual deployed troops and therefore it has less to lose. Egypt, while keen on protecting its border and interests, has no desire to bog itself down in a military quagmire,” Mabrouk wrote.
A study conducted by a team of Columbia University researchers has revealed Ankara’s deep ties with terror organizations.
The study has said that Turkish soldiers have allowed ISIS terrorists to cross the Turkish-Syrian border with the permission of Ankara.
“To limit Turkey’s aggression, America must put in place a “maximum pressure” campaign on its economy as we did to Iran. The more passes we give to Turkey, the more difficult it will be to constrain it in the future,” the researchers wrote.
