UN Libya envoy in Cairo for meetings with Egypt leadership

Newly-installed United Nations Libya envoy Ghassan Salame was in Cairo on Monday for the latest round of high-level discussions with the Egyptian leadership on resolving the Libyan crisis.
Mr Salame, a former Lebanese political sciences professor based in Paris, joins a long line of previous successors hoping to stem the country’s political gridlock, which has been exacerbated by the country’s patchwork of unruly militias.
His Monday meetings in Egypt came just hours after former Libyan prime minister Ali Zeidan, who served in the elected post between 2012 and 2014, was detained in Tripoli by the Tripoli Revolutionaries Brigade militia on an outstanding warrant. The so-called “arrest”, which took place overnight, was the second time Mr Zeidan had effectively been kidnapped from a hotel and underscores a fragile political landscape dominated by tribalism and patronage from other Arab nations.
The political hopes of a wide range of players, including the United States, are pinned on Mr Salame’s efforts. But Egypt is not a neutral broker in the negotiations, according to observers of Libya.