UN envoy eyes preliminary Libya deal Thursday

SKHIRAT, Morocco — UN envoy Bernardino Leon said Monday he hoped Libya's rival parliaments would endorse his proposals for a unity government later this week after they failed to do so at the weekend.

Leon said that there were only two or three remaining stumbling blocks and that he hoped those could be addressed when the talks resume in Morocco on Thursday.

"After all these nine months of work we just have two, three issues and this is what the parties are going to discuss tomorrow and after tomorrow," Leon told a news conference early Monday after late-night talks.

"The idea is to be back on Wednesday and to have our next meeting on Thursday. And on Thursday we will try to initialise the agreement."

Leon had hoped the rival sides would initial the agreement on Sunday night, but despite holding their first face-to-face negotiations since March, they left without doing so.

Plunged into chaos since the overthrow of Muammar Qadhafi's regime in 2011, Libya has two parliaments — and two governments — vying for power, one in Tripoli and one in the eastern port city of Tobruk, which is recognised by the international community.

The delegation from the Tripoli parliament complained it had not been consulted by UN mediators about changes they had made to an initial draft.

"Three key points of the UN draft agreement had been modified without our consultation," delegation spokesman Ashoh Ashraf told reporters.

A surge of jihadist violence across the region, including the killing of 38 people, most of them British tourists, at a Tunisian beach resort on Friday, has prompted mounting international pressure for a deal.

The Daesh terror group has taken advantage of fighting between the rival governments to establish a foothold in several Libyan towns.