Russia 'prepared to cooperate with US' on Libya crisis
Russia 'prepared to cooperate with US' on Libya crisis
Russia and US officials have both stated their interest in tackling the ongoing crisis in Libya.
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The Russian diplomat suggested bilateral cooperation was needed to tackle Libya's political crisis [Getty]
Russia is open to cooperating with the US in order to tackle the crisis in Libya, Russia’s ambassador to Libya Ivan Molotk announced in Tripoli on Wednesday.
He also said that Moscow was ready to initiate the lifting of the international arms embargo on Libya, once Libya had a united national army.
The latest announcements come days after Russia stated it will “do everything necessary” to help Libyan rival factions reach an agreement in order to bring an end to the crisis in the war-torn country.
"Russia is ready to facilitate the implementation of agreements in every possible way," the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday. "From the very beginning of the Libyan crisis, we have been maintaining contacts with all the political sides," he added.
The US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has previously stated he hopes that the UN-enforced arms embargo can be eased in the near future.
The UN imposed the embargo since the 2011 Libyan revolution which ousted the Gaddafi regime and plunged the country into a violent civil war.
The UN has launched a plan to encourage national reconciliation in Libya, which it hopes will enable national polls that could unify Libya under a cohesive, elected regime.The announcement came on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin called his US counterpart President Trump to discuss, "the situation in several crisis zones, with a focus on solving the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula," the Kremlin said in a statement, without elaborating.
Putin also allegedly congratulated Trump on the state of the US economy.
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