The U.N. special envoy for Libya warned that signs of partition are already evident in the troubled North African nation and urged influential nations to pressure Libya’s rival leaders to urgently finalize the constitutional basis for elections. Bathily told the U.N. Security Council that the continuing disagreement between the two rivals — specifically, the speaker of Libya’s HoR, Aguila Saleh, and Khaled al-Mashri, the president of the HSC based— on a limited number of provisions in the constitution “can no longer serve as a justification to hold an entire country hostage.” If the two institutions can’t reach an agreement swiftly, Bathily said, “an alternative mechanism”, can and should be used “to alleviate the sufferings caused by outdated and open-ended interim political arrangements.” He did not elaborate on what that mechanism could be. Read more from UNSMIL.