 NATO ready to help future Libya unity govt: Stoltenberg Rome (AFP) Dec 6, 2015 - NATO is ready to help a future national unity government in Libya but remains opposed to any military intervention in the war-torn country, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview published Sunday. "If a national unity government is formed, we are ready to help it and provide assistance," Stoltenberg said in an interview with Italy's Repubblica and several other European newspapers ahead of an international conference on Libya in Rome next Sunday. However, "we are not discussing a major new military operation in Libya, and I will not be recommending it," he said. His remarks were published just hours before Libya's warring factions, who are holding talks in Tunisia, said they had reached an agreement on ending the political deadlock that has plagued the country since Moamer Kadhafi's overthrow. Former colonial power Italy will host the December 13 conference which is aimed at preventing Libya's total collapse and halting the advance of the extremist Islamic State group. Experts have warned that IS has been shifting to Libya as the world focuses on its traditional power bases in Iraq and Syria, taking advantage of the chaos as rival militias and governments battle for power. But UN-brokered talks on the formation of a national unity government in Libya collapsed in October and have yet to resume. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi pointed to the crisis in Libya as he sought to defend Rome's decision not to join international military action against IS jihadists. The north African country was thrown into chaos after a 2011 revolt backed by Western military intervention overthrew Kadhafi. "If being a protagonist means adding to the bombardments of others, then I say no thanks! Italy already used this strategy in Libya in 2011," Renzi told the Corriere della Serra newspaper. "Four years of civil war in Libya shows this was not a wise choice. Today there needs to be another strategy." Italy is on the frontline of a migrant crisis fuelled by the conflict in Libya, which has become an unpoliced launchpad for people traffickers shipping desperate people across the Mediterranean, frequently with deadly consequences.
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Warring Libyan factions meeting in Tunisia said Sunday they had reached an agreement to be approved by rival parliaments on ending the political deadlock that has plagued the country since Moamer Kadhafi's overthrow.
"This is a historic moment the Libyans were waiting for, the Arabs were waiting for and the world was waiting for," said Awad Mohammed Abdul-Sadiq, the first deputy head of the Tripoli-based General National Congress (GNC).
GNC officials had been holding talks in the suburbs of Tunis for several days with delegates from the internationally recognised House of Representatives.
Abdul-Sadiq called on Libyans to support what he called "a historic opportunity".
"If this solution receives real Libyan support -- from the people and institutions -- we will surely arrive in no more than two weeks or a month to a solution to solve the political crisis," he told a press conference.
Amna Emtair from the GNC delegation told AFP the agreement would set up a new representative body that would choose a committee to nominate a prime minister within 15 days, while another committee would conduct a review of Libya's constitution.
"It is a major breakthrough," Emtair said.
Libya descended into chaos after the October 2011 ouster and killing of longtime dictator Kadhafi, with two governments vying for power and armed groups battling for control of its vast energy resources.
A militia alliance including Islamists overran Tripoli in August 2014, establishing a rival government and a parliament that forced the internationally recognised administration to flee to the country's remote east.
Veteran German diplomat Martin Kobler took over the job of UN special envoy for Libya on November 17, replacing Spaniard Bernardino Leon.
After almost a year of arduous negotiations, Leon in early October proposed a power-sharing deal under which Libya would be governed by a nine-member presidential council made up of a prime minister, five deputy premiers and three senior ministers.
But lawmakers from Libya's internationally recognised parliament and its Tripoli-based rival balked at the deal and the names put forward by Leon.
In news conferences in Tobruk and Tripoli in his first week, Kobler urged politicians on both sides to rally around the deal proposed by his predecessor to set up a national unity government.
The latest announcement comes as experts and sources in Libya said that the Islamic State jihadist group has strengthened its grip in its Libyan stronghold Sirte.
IS first appeared in Libya in 2014 when a group of Libyan IS fighters returned from Syria and reorganised in the port city of Derna, declaring eastern Libya to be a province of the caliphate.
Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Wednesday that Rome would host an international conference on Libya on December 13, aimed at stopping the country from falling apart and containing IS.
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