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U.N. Envoy to Libya Ghassan Salame and Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte attend a news conference after the second day of the international conference on Libya in Palermo, Italy November 13, 2018.GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE/Reuters

The Italian-sponsored Libya peace conference ended Tuesday in disorder as several key players in the effort to stabilize the shattered country either walked out of the final meetings or refused to participate in them.

The apparent lack of progress in uniting Libya underscored the political complexity of finding a common vision for a country that is ruled by rival governments in the east and the west and overrun by militias, human traffickers and criminal gangs, some with terrorist connections. Libya even has two competing central banks.

Even though the Italians went into the conference with fairly low expectations, given that every diplomatic effort to unite the country since it was torn apart by the 2011 civil war has made little progress, the outcome nonetheless must have disappointed them. While Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, the host of the two day-event in Palermo, the Sicilian capital, declared the conference a “success," he struggled to say what initiatives, if any, were fleshed out.

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The conference was the first major international diplomatic event hosted by Mr. Conte, whose populist government was formed in the spring. With his hopes dashed for a breakthrough that would open the way to Libyan national elections, Italy’s ambition to establish itself as the top European power broker in Libya, a former Italian colony with Africa’s biggest oil reserves, seems to have made little progress.

Around midday, Italian time, the conference suffered a series of blows from no-shows and walkouts. The powerful eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar boycotted the final plenary meeting, though one of his representatives did attend. Diplomats at the conference said that representatives of the Supreme Council of State, an advisory body to the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), in Tripoli, walked out because Mr. Haftar did not appear.

About the same time, the Turks left the conference in a huff, complaining that they were left out of key meetings. Turkish Vice-President Fuat Oktay said: “Unfortunately the international community has not been able to unite this morning. … The crisis in Libya will not be solved if some countries continue to hijack the process for their own narrow interests.”

Mr. Oktay did not say which countries were doing the hijacking. Diplomats said that Mr. Oktay was upset by Mr. Haftar’s late arrival, early departure and no-show at group meetings, and by Turkey’s exclusion from a meeting on Mediterranean security.

Michel Cousins, editor-in-chief of the Libya Herald online newspaper, said the Palermo conference was probably doomed from the start, given all the parochial and conflicting interests – some 30 countries, including Canada, had sent delegates to Palermo. “It’s a farce but it was always going to be a farce,” he said.

Mr. Haftar limited his presence to several private meetings, including one with Fayez Mustafa al-Sarraj, president of the GNA, and another with Mr. Conte. On a positive note, Italian diplomats said Mr. Haftar gave assurances that he would support Mr. al-Sarraj’s presidency as Libya struggles to outline a plan for national elections. According to an Italian government spokesman, Mr. Haftar told Mr. al-Sarraj that “we don’t need to change horses in midstream.”

Some diplomats, none of whom wanted to be quoted by name, said the mere fact that the conference brought the top Libyan factions into one room constituted progress. On Libyan soil, these factions meet only rarely, or don’t meet at all, they said, meaning that international conferences are the best way for them to try to bridge their differences.

Stéphane Dion, Canada’s special envoy to Europe who was Canada’s senior representative in Palermo, agreed. “There was broad representation at the Palermo conference,” he said. “The presence of countries such as Canada is important to Libyans as we are seen to be working in the interests of the Libyan people and the broader interests of the global community.”

At a press conference at the end of the event, Ghassan Salamé, the well-respected head of the UN’s Support Mission in Libya (UNSML), said the Palermo event was a success in that there was broad agreement that Libya should move toward an electoral process in the spring. The plan, he said, is to hold an all-inclusive national conference in the new year, the first step in the process to break Libya’s political deadlock, draft a new constitution and electoral law, disarm the militias and move toward national elections.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted a Libyan peace conference in May, had tried to set Dec. 10 as the date for national elections. That date proved wildly ambitious. Mr. Salamé said that Mr. Haftar’s fleeting presence in Palermo did not mean he was not in favour of a national conference. “What happened to Haftar today would in no way impede the political process,” he said.

All of the delegates in Palermo agreed that a united, peaceful Libya was essential to prevent its generally lawless territories from becoming a free-for-all for terrorists. “Given Daesh [the Islamic State] and al-Qaeda and related groups are operating in Libya, it’s of crucial importance not to allow a security vacuum, “ Mr. Dion said. “Libya’s location at the heart of the trade routes between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, and in the middle of the North African coastline of the Mediterranean on NATO’s southern flank, makes it of strategic importance to both Western and African countries.”

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