Secretary General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, has urged “the various Libyan parties the need to uphold the supreme interest of the country above any calculations and narrow interests.”
He pointed out: “Libya is going through a dangerous juncture that requires everyone to unite and cooperate to achieve the electoral merit as soon as possible, and in a way that leads to the interest of the general Libyan people in choosing the expression of their will, which helps to preserve the unity and sovereignty of the state.”
An official Arab league source said: “Aboul Gheit is following with interest the developments in the Libyan arena during the past period.”
He pointed out that these developments prevented the holding of presidential and parliamentary elections on schedule previously agreed by the Libyans, as well as the international community, in order to pave the way for the state of Libya to safely cross that sensitive stage of its history.
Libyans celebrated on Friday the 70th anniversary of independence amid widespread disappointment over the postponement of the presidential election, which was scheduled for last Friday, and was seen as a step towards lifting the country out of instability.
He said the elections were an opportunity to end the long transitional stages that dominated the Libyan political scene, thus missing the opportunity to elect a head of state directly from the people, for the first time in the history of Libya.
The Arab league source urged “all parties concerned to adopt dialogue as the only means to resolve the dispute, and to exclude options of violence and resorting to weapons or even waving them.”
“Maintaining the stability of the situation is necessary to enable Libyans to express their will freely through the electoral process, and it is also necessary to have a national consensus on the legal and procedural rules of the elections, and then respect the results and abide by them,” he said.
The source stressed: “The international will – as expressed in more than one forum in recent months-emphasizes the centrality of holding presidential and parliamentary elections, and ending the presence of foreign military presence in all its forms, as a necessity for the stability of Libya away from the effects of the Civil War witnessed recently.”
