Libya strongman Haftar backs 2018 elections

Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar has said he will support 2018 elections but also implied he would seize power if the polls did not happen, AFP said. Haftar said late Thursday that presidential and parliamentary elections were “a fundamental solution” to Libya’s crisis and should be held “without delay or fraud.” A UN-backed unity government in Tripoli has failed to impose its authority nationwide. It has been rejected by a rival administration backed by Haftar in the east of the country. This month, Haftar said the unity government had definitively lost all legitimacy after the expiry of the December 2015 UN-brokered agreement that gave rise to it.