On Friday, the UN Security Council approved the appointment of the Slovak diplomat Jan Kubis as the UN envoy to Libya, nearly a year after the resignation of the former envoy, Ghassan Salame.
Kubis, 68, has nominated United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to succeed Salama, who resigned from the post last March due to stress, and Stephanie Williams (Salame's deputy) took over as the acting international envoy to Libya.
Kubiš served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in Slovakia, and is currently the United Nations Special Coordinator in Lebanon, as well as previously serving as United Nations envoys in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The appointment came after the Security Council last month approved Guterres’s plan to appoint the Bulgarian diplomat Nikolai Mladenov as an envoy to Libya, but Mladenov told the Secretary-General a week later that he would not be able to undertake the mission for "personal and family reasons."
Some diplomats met Kubis’s proposal conservatively, according to what two diplomats said - who requested anonymity - and one of them said, “We have followed the consensus, but (Kubis) does not have a good reputation in terms of effectiveness” in achieving his goals.
Libya slid into chaos after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi with support from NATO in 2011, while the two main parties in the Libyan conflict: the internationally recognized Government of National Accord and the forces of retired Major General Khalifa Haftar last October agreed to a ceasefire.