The United Nations has called off a reconciliation conference aimed at organizing elections in Libya because of fighting raging near the capital city.

Ghassan Salame, the UN envoy to Libya, said the national conference planned for next week would be postponed until further notice due to the on-going battle for Tripoli.

"We cannot ask people to take part in the conference during gunfire and air strikes," he said, adding that he hoped the meeting would go ahead as soon as possible.

Major players in Libya were meant to meet in the Western border town of Ghadames on April 14 to 16 to hammer out a deal paving the way to nation-wide elections later this year.

The meeting was the center piece of months of UN diplomacy, and the central goal was to broker a deal between Fayez al-Serraj, the prime minister of the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, and Khalifa Haftar, a renegade general whose self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) controls the east of the country.

But the plan was thrown into chaos last week when Gen Haftar launched an assault on Tripoli, the seat of Mr Serraj’s government, on the pretext of rooting out terrorists. </s> The United Nations has been forced to postpone a carefully planned and potentially watershed national conference on Libya’s political future following the attack on the Libyan capital, Tripoli, by forces under the command of the eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar.

The two-day conference in the town of Ghadames was due to be attended by 120 delegates on 14-15 April. The decision to shelve the summit is a blow to Libya’s democratic forces, who had hoped it might open a path to presidential and parliamentary elections by the end of this year.

But Ghassan Salamé, the UN special envoy for Libya, said the global body intended to convene the conference as soon as conditions permit, but that it would be impossible to hold the talks “to the backdrop of artillery shelling and air raids”.

“The renewed violence undermined the minimum confidence to launch any fruitful dialogue,” he said in a statement.

The announcement came as Libyan health officials said the death toll in Tripoli had reached 49 since the battle for the capital started in earnest last Thursday.

Both sides claimed military advances: Haftar’s Libyan national army asserted they were making progress across seven fronts mainly in the south of Tripoli, but the spokesman for the UN-recognised government of national accord (GNA) said Haftar’s forces were being pushed back.

Analysts said Haftar had been expecting that more forces in the west of the country, including some Tripoli militia, would desert the GNA’s prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj. Haftar has billed his campaign as an effort to drive out Islamist militias that use corruption and violence to control the GNA.

However, Haftar’s critics claim he has no interest in democracy, and say he launched his assault just as Salamé’s peace plan was reaching a critical stage.

The success of Haftar’s gamble may depend on the degree of private pressure exerted by his allies including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and France.

Britain, the “penholder” on Libya at the UN, was on Tuesday testing the possibility of pushing for a fresh UN security council resolution calling for economic sanctions against Haftar, something that might lead to a Russian veto.

The UK foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, also held calls with his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, and with the UAE’s foreign ministry.

France, which is under pressure to join the UK, Germany and the US in condemning Haftar’s actions, issued a statement saying the French president had spoken with both Haftar and Sarraj.

The Élysée statement said the Emmanuel Macron “recalled that there was no military solution to the Libyan conflict. It marked the imperative to act immediately to end the fighting and ease tensions. He gave his full support to the United Nations mediation efforts and called on all parties to return to dialogue.”

Le Drian said it was essential that talks were re-established on the basis of an agreement reached between Sarraj and Haftar in Abu Dhabi on 27 February that reduced the size of the current nine-strong presidential council .

Salamé did little to hide his frustration at the fighting’s impact on his efforts to bring about political reconciliation. “We were surprised to hear the drums of war again with an unexpected attack,” he said.

In a Facebook message he continued: “We began to invite the Libyan personalities to attend the Libyan national forum, not to install a political elite, as some imagined, nor to share any cake, but to resolve the options among the Libyans and to ensure that the emerging formulas are fair to all Libyans and loyal to what came during the Libyan consultative process.”
The UN cancels a planned Libyan National Conference that was due to take place later in April for negotiations between different political factions to organise new elections due to the ongoing fighting in Tripoli.