BENGHAZI – Eastern Libyan forces commander Khalifa Haftar met French President Emmanuel Macron’s special envoy Paul Soler in Benghazi on Monday to discuss support for efforts to unify Libya’s divided institutions ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections.
The meeting reflected France’s continued engagement in Libya and its efforts to push towards a political process capable of ending the country’s prolonged institutional and political split.
A statement issued by Haftar’s forces said the talks covered a range of local and regional issues of mutual interest, with the two sides stressing the importance of unifying state institutions as a step towards holding elections.
Haftar praised what he described as the strength of Libyan-French relations and his relationship with Macron. He also commended Paris for its support for eastern Libyan forces in confronting terrorism and extremism.
Soler, meanwhile, praised the role of Haftar’s forces in supporting stability and strengthening security, while conveying Macron’s greetings and reaffirming France’s support for efforts to promote stability, safety and security in Libya.
The talks took place as Libya remains divided between rival political and institutional centres. The Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, headed by Abdulhamid Dbeibah, whose mandate has expired, controls western Libya, while the administration led by Osama Hamad and backed by the House of Representatives governs the east and much of the south.
Local and international efforts have so far failed to overcome disputes over the formation of a unified government, the rules governing elections and the distribution of powers and state resources.
That division has created room for international and regional powers to expand their influence in Libya, giving France an incentive to maintain contacts with the country’s competing centres of power rather than limiting its role to monitoring the crisis from outside.
Engagement with Haftar is particularly important because of his military and political influence in eastern and southern Libya and his ability to affect any future arrangements concerning the country’s political and security order.
France has sought through this approach to strengthen its position as a player capable of contributing to a political settlement, drawing on its relationships with several Libyan actors and its involvement in security and counterterrorism issues.
A push to unify Libya’s institutions also fits broader European interests in having a more cohesive Libyan authority capable of securing the country’s borders, combating smuggling and irregular migration networks and addressing security challenges across the Mediterranean and Sahel.
Soler, a former French special forces commander who has been closely involved in France’s Libya diplomacy, has played a prominent role in maintaining Paris’s contacts with rival Libyan factions.
The Benghazi meeting follows a period of intensified military and diplomatic engagement between France and Haftar’s forces. Earlier this year, Haftar’s son and deputy commander of the eastern forces, Saddam Haftar, made official visits to Paris and held high-level meetings at the Elysee Palace with Soler and French military officials on future arrangements for military training and capacity-building.
The latest French engagement also comes alongside efforts by the United Nations mission in Libya to revive the political process. The mission has proposed a roadmap involving an acceptable electoral framework, the formation of a unified government and a broader political dialogue.
A smaller “4+4” dialogue committee has also signed an agreement aimed at holding elections within 24 months, reflecting renewed attempts to restart the political process even as significant obstacles remain to implementing any such agreement.
France is seeking to promote institutional unification partly because it sees elections alone as insufficient to resolve Libya’s crisis. Without agreement on the institutions and rules governing the next phase, a new electoral process could reproduce the same divisions if rival factions reject its outcome or dispute the powers of the authority it produces.
For Paris, the challenge is also to maintain a balance between its relationships with eastern and western Libya. Closer engagement with Haftar could strengthen France’s influence in the east, but it also carries the risk of complicating its ability to maintain effective channels with authorities and political actors in Tripoli.
The meeting therefore comes as competing international and regional powers seek influence over Libya’s future, while efforts to create unified institutions and a functioning political system remain central to attempts to move the country towards elections.