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The boss of the CIA is in Libya. William Burns was in Tripoli at the weekend. He is the most senior American official to visit the country since Joe Biden took over the White House.
With our correspondent in Washington, Guillaume Naudin
When you are the boss of the CIA, you are by nature discreet. This is why a photo of the director of the most important American intelligence service with the Libyan Prime Minister has message value. William Burns spoke on Thursday January 12 with Abdel Hamid Dbeibah and several other government officials in Tripoli, still contested in a country fractured by several years of civil war.
This visit is the first by a CIA director since the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi which in 2012 claimed the lives of the American ambassador in the country and three other Americans. It comes following the United States seized a Libyan national accused of making the Lockerbie bombing of an American Boeing that killed 270 people in 1988. The government in Tripoli has been widely criticized for that.
The United States is also interested in the role played by Russia and in particular by the Wagner mercenary group in the Libyan conflict. The group is known to help Marshal Haftar, who leads a rival faction of the Tripoli government and controls the east of the country. According to local sources, William Burns also met him during this trip. But here, there is no photo to confirm it.
