DUBAI: The UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, has discussed the need for an immediate end to hostilities in Libya in a conversation with Stephanie Turco Williams, the deputy head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), he revealed in a tweet.
And Gargash said there was a shared concern for Libya’s ability to handle the situation with COVID-19 as an equal priority to any ceasefire.
Discussed with @stephanie_unsml the need for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Libya and re-emphasised UAE support for the Berlin process & active UN role. Share concern for the country’s ability to address COVID-19 as an equally important priority.
— د. أنور قرقاش (@AnwarGargash) April 11, 2020
Williams previously said that an escalation in Libya’s war was straining the country’s ability to handle the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s incredibly reckless. It’s inhumane, it’s stretching the capacity of local authorities and the health infrastructure that is already decimated,” Stephanie Williams told Bloomberg in an interview. “And they’re whistling past the graveyard, that’s what they’re doing.”
One of Tripoli’s largest hospitals has been forced to close amid intensified fighting in which the facility came under three days of shelling as the country reported at least 24 cases of coronavirus infections.
