The Libyan ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Taher El Sonni, has confirmed that the proposal of the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, to send international monitors to oversee the implementation of the ceasefire won’t include military forces or blue helmets.
El Sonni said on Twitter Saturday that dispatching international monitors to Libya came to fulfill a request made by the Libyan 5+5 Joint Military Commission, saying they monitors wouldn’t be armed and would work under the UN supervision.
He also explained that the UN proposal to send the monitors aimed at dispatching them at the “triangle road of Ben Jawad, Abu Grein and Soukna in central Libya”, adding that the proposal was awaiting a Security Council endorsement in order to be implemented in Libya.
Meanwhile, the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) said in a statement Thursday that it “foresees the deployment of a limited number of impartial, unarmed, non-uniformed, international monitors, to complement the Libyan monitors deployed by the 5+5 Joint Military Commission.”
UNSMIL added that this step was stated by the UN Secretary General in his report to the Security Council on December 30, 2020, in which he proposed ceasefire support arrangements through the establishment of a monitoring component as part of UNSMIL.
