Electoral authorities were finalising the vote count on Monday from Libya’s first free polls in decades as an architect of the revolt that toppled Moamer Kadhafi called for national unity talks. Mahmud Jibril of the National Forces Alliances, which is expected to do well based on preliminary unofficial figures from the weekend election for a national assembly, called for all parties to come together. “We extend an honest call for a national dialogue to come all together in one coalition, under one banner… to reach a compromise, a consensus on which the constitution can be drafted and the new government can be composed,” said the NFA leader. “There was no loser and winner at all. Whoever is going to win, Libya is the real winner of those elections,” Jibril added. His remarks came hours after the leader of the rival Justice and Construction Party, Mohammed Sawan, admitted the NFA had an early lead in the vote count for the capital and Libya’s second-largest city of Benghazi. “The National Forces Alliance achieved good results in some large cities except Misrata,” he added. UN leader Ban Ki-moon called for Libya’s new leaders to govern in a spirit of “justice and reconciliation” as he hailed the country’s first elections since Kadhafi’s downfall.
