Former Libya envoy accuses Security Council of 'hypocrisy'

CAIRO (AP) — A former U.N. envoy to Libya has accused the Security Council of “hypocrisy” and of undermining his efforts to bring peace to the war-torn North African country.

In a podcast interview aired Tuesday, Ghassan Salame said the majority of the U.N. Security Council supported the military offensive launched last year by Libyan commander Khalifa Hifter to capture the capital, Tripoli, from the internationally recognized government.

“You are at the same time being stabbed in the back by most of the Security Council, because the day Hiftar attacked Tripoli he had most of them supporting him, while you are being criticized by the Libyans for not stopping him,” said Salame, referring to himself in his first interview since resigning from his post in March.

Salame spoke to The Mediator’s Studio, a newly launched podcast from the Oslo Forum, a series of annual retreats for international peace mediators and top decision makers.

Since 2015, Libya has been divided into two governments: one in the east, allied with Hifter, and another in the west. The Tripoli-based government has the backing of Italy, Turkey and Qatar, while Hifter is supported by Russia, France, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

Salame resigned from his U.N. post amid an escalation in fighting in Libya and just days after he announced the near breakdown of a shaky truce between Libya's warring parties. At the time, he said his health could no longer “allow this rate of stress.”

His resignation also came a few weeks after a Libya peace summit in Berlin, where world leaders agreed to uphold a U.N. arms embargo and to end military backing for Libya’s warring factions to pave the way for a long-lasting cease-fire — a commitment that Salame discredited in his interview.

Salame said the...