The US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Barbara A. Leaf, spoke Thursday with Khalifa Haftar and reiterated the urgent need to prevent outside actors, including the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group, from further destabilizing Libya or its neighbors, including Sudan.
The warning for Haftar regarding his relations to the Russian private military group came after a separate phone call Leaf made with the Libyan Foreign Minister, Najla Al-Mangoush.
In a tweet by the US State Department also on Thursday, Washington said that together with Tripoli, it strongly supported the efforts to end the violence in Sudan and prevent further regional spillover, adding that Al-Mangoush and Leaf discussed the impact of Sudan’s unrest on regional security as well the importance of full support for UN efforts leading to Libyan elections.
