On Thursday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that he had nominated Slovakian diplomat Jan Kubis as his envoy in Libya, according to a letter to the U.N. Security Council.
According to the letter, in case of the approval of the 15-member council on Friday evening, Kubis will succeed Ghassan Salame, who quit the role in March last year due to stress. Salame’s deputy Stephanie Williams has been acting Libya envoy.
Kubis, a former Slovakian foreign minister, is currently the U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon. He has also served as the U.N. special envoy in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The planned appointment of Kubis comes after the Security Council approved in December a plan by Guterres’ to name Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov to the Libya role. But a week later Mladenov said he could not take up the position due to “personal and family reasons.”
This position has remained vacant since March 2020, when the previous envoy Ghassan Salame announced his resignation for health reasons. Members of the Security Council were unable to reach an agreement on a candidate to assume this position.
Libya descended into chaos after the NATO-backed overthrow of leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. In October, the two major sides in the country’s war - the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) and Khalifa Haftar’s eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) - agreed a ceasefire.
Haftar is supported by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia, while the government is backed by Turkey.
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