Free Republic

Former Libyan prime minister Ali Zeidan has fled to Europe after parliament voted him out of office on Tuesday over his failure to stop rebels exporting oil independently in a brazen challenge to the nation's fragile unity. Zeidan was in Malta for two hours late on Tuesday on a short stop before going to "another European country", Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told state-owned television TVM. Government sources in Malta said he had left via a private plane bound for Germany, but the German authorities could not confirm he had arrived. The standoff over control of oil exports runs across dangerous...

TRIPOLI/ES SIDER, Libya, March 11 (Reuters) - Libya's parliament voted Prime Minister Ali Zeidan out of office on Tuesday after a tanker loaded with oil from a rebel-held port escaped the navy, officials said. Zeidan, a liberal weakened for months by infighting with Islamists, will be temporarily replaced by Defence Minister Abdallah al-Thinni, parliament spokesman Omar Hmeidan told reporters. The news deepens the turmoil in the North African country, a member of the OPEC oil producer group, where the government has struggled to impose order and rein in militias that helped oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but now defy state...

Gunmen yesterday seized Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan from a hotel in central Tripoli, releasing him shortly afterwards, but making it clear that post-Gaddafi Libya is a failed state and that the government is incapable of taking full control over its oilfields and export terminals. While the markets have been responding lately with unfounded optimism over Libya, anyone who has been privy to the intelligence briefings and executive reports from Oil & Energy Insider would know that announcements of progress emanating from the capital Tripoli are hot air. There are too many roving militias who want their piece of Libya’s...

Abu Dhabi-based Sky News Arabia quoted Libyan security sources as saying that Zeidan was seized from a hotel where he was staying in the Libyan capital and taken to an unknown destination.

Libya's General National Congress (GNC) elected Ali Zeidan, a long-time opponent of deposed dictator Moamer Kadhafi, as prime minister on Sunday, the assembly's chief said. "Ali Zeidan is elected prime minister and is asked to propose a cabinet within two weeks," Mohammed Megaryef, president of the national assembly, said in remarks broadcast on television. Benefitting from the backing of the liberal coalition in the 200-seat assembly, Zeidan won 93 of the votes cast, trumping the 85 garnered by the only other candidate, local government minister Mohammed al-Hrari. The GNC must approve the government team proposed by Zeidan in order for...