Palermo, Italy – An international conference on Libya has ended in the Italian city of Palermo with commitments but no binding agreement by warring factions to a United Nations-led road map envisaging elections next year.

In a joint press conference on Tuesday, UN Special Envoy for Libya Ghassan Salame and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte described the two-day summit as a “success” and a “first step in the right direction” – but walked away with no more than verbal pledges.

“Palermo was a milestone for Libyans to set a common framework,” Salame said, referring to the plan for a national conference and subsequent elections to be held in the first months of 2019.

The UN envoy said renegade General Khalifa Haftar, the most reluctant to engage in the UN-led process, was “committed to support” the proposed road map.

However, the summit ended without a written agreement and with no clear timetable either for the national conference or the election process.

It was also unclear whether the parties found any common ground with regards to the additional economic and security measures needed to stabilise war-wracked Libya and give respite to its languishing economy in view of the upcoming consultations.

‘You don’t change a horse in midstream’

More than seven years since a NATO-backed uprising toppled longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi, Libya remains deeply fragmented along tribal and ethnic lines and caught up in a spiral of violence at the hands of rival militias.

In addition, the difficulties to enact reforms is exacerbated by the existence of two rival parliaments – the internationally recognised Government of National Accord in the capital, Tripoli, and the eastern-based House of Representatives (HOR).

The UN and most of the international community support Fayez al-Serraj, the head of GNA. Al-Serraj, whose administration has been grappling with a prolonged security and economic crisis, has attempted to broaden the base of his political consensus in a bid to salvage his executive.

The other front, led by HOR and Haftar, whose self-styled Libyan National Army controls much of eastern Libya, perceives al-Sarraj as incapable of bringing back security to Tripoli as well as to the rest of the country, where rival militias and criminal gangs continue to rule undisturbed.

However, Haftar on Tuesday apparently expressed his intention to wait for the national conference and elections to take place, before seeking a forcible change in Tripoli.

“You don’t change a horse in midstream,” he was reported as saying to his rival al-Serraj at an informal meeting on the sidelines of the conference.

If confirmed, Haftar’s decision may buy time for GNA and the UN mission to improve security measures in Tripoli and across Libya in view of the proposed elections in the spring. 

“We need to support the current ceasefire and extend it if we are to move the political process forward,” Salame said in Tuesday’s press conference. In September, the envoy brokered a ceasefire after weeks of clashes between militias in and outside of the capital.

Turkey delegation walks out

For his part, Conte said he regretted that some of the delegates decided to walk out of the the conference, referring to Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay’s withdrawal from the plenary meeting.

The Turkish delegation was apparently disappointed at not being invited to join the informal meeting between Haftar and al-Serraj.

While the Turkish delegation was reportedly excluded from the session, French Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and various others were in the room.

“I am sorry the Turkish delegation decided to leave,” said Conte.

“Bringing together 30 countries with a direct or indirect involvement in Libya, means exposing the meeting to different sensitivities. This doesn’t change the positive atmosphere we registered overall.”

Sources close to Haftar – believed to be backed by Russia, Egypt and France – had expressed his disappointment at the presence of Turkish and Qatari officials at the conference.

Conte said his government is ready to assist the stabilisation process both financially and with capacity-building initiatives like the training of security and police forces. He added that Rome Italy had already pledged 1.5m euros ($1.7m) for elections.

Rome – An informal refugee camp in Rome which opened at the height of the crisis in 2015 was evacuated on Tuesday, sending several vulnerable people onto the streets as winter sets in.

Located in an empty parking lot near one of Rome’s main train stations, the Baobab camp would normally host around 300 people, mostly transiting for a few days or months. 

While the eviction had been expected for weeks, around 150 people were still at the camp on Tuesday morning when police vans surrounded and closed the area.

Some residents loaded suitcases and plastic bags with their belongings onto police vans before being driven away to a police station for identification.

While the Rome municipality offered places in reception centres to some of the refugees, not everyone will have a place to go after bulldozers finish clearing their tents.

“We have been negotiating with the municipality for the past week,” said Andrea Costa, one of the activists running the camp. “We thought they’d take a few more days as we were promised 120 places. Up to this morning, the number of people relocated was 65.”

According to the Rome municipality, 75 people were assigned alternative accommodation this past week, meaning at least dozens have nowhere to go.

Camps in Rome host 3,500 of at least 10,000 refugees and migrants living mostly in abandoned buildings without basic infrastructure [Ylenia Gostoli/Al Jazeera]

Originally set up to deal with the high number of arrivals to Italy, in recent years Baobab had become a transit place for refugees who fell out of the reception system, were never offered a place, or were sent back to Italy under the Dublin regulation – which allows European countries to return asylum seekers to the country where they first registered. There were also a handful of homeless people, including Italians, at the camp.

Said* (not his real name), an Egyptian man in his fifties who has lived in Italy for 20 years, dragged his few belongings on a shopping trolley down the street leading out of the camp. Some of the bags contained goods he sells without a license on the streets of Rome.

He has been homeless for the past 10 years after personal difficulties, and said he was heading to the municipality’s social services to see if they could find a temporary solution.

“There’s no place for all of us, not just from Baobab. You go there and they tell you, come back tomorrow,” he said.

Baobab is one of many informal settlements in the capital, which hosts 3,500 of at least 10,000 refugees and migrants living mostly in abandoned buildings without basic infrastructure, according to an MSF report published earlier this year.

The Baobab camp was aimed at refugees who have fallen out of the reception system [Ylenia Gostoli/Al Jazeera]

While some may have been denied international protection, others are simply waiting for their application to be examined and would have the right to housing.

“It is absurd that the municipality is not able to find a place [in reception centres] for a few hundred people, it is absurd to continue to fan citizens’ fears,” Costa said. “Rome won’t be a better place tonight.”

Costa added that a team of volunteers, lawyers and medics was ready to meet the migrants and refugees upon their release from the police station.

While lacking basic infrastructure, Baobab was run by volunteers who took care of daily food distribution and provided language classes, legal assistance, and medical help through NGOs.

Salvini’s threat

It is the twenty-second time the camp is dismantled since it was opened.

The Italian railway company, which owns the land, had recently started building a fence around the camp as part of a plan to turn the area into a public park. 

“It has been weeks that [far-right Interior Minister] Matteo Salvini and others in the governing coalition attack Baobab directly as one of those examples to persecute ‘accomplices’ of the migrants,” Costa told Al Jazeera.

Riportare legalità, ordine e sicurezza, quartiere per quartiere.

Dopo #Baobab arriveranno a Roma altri sgomberi: 4 edifici pericolanti e 23 interessati da iniziative giudiziarie.

Non ci fermeremo, questo è solo l’inizio, qui come in tutta Italia.#dalleparoleaifatti pic.twitter.com/ShR5lbMq7h

— Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) November 13, 2018

In September, Salvini sent an official letter to local authorities across the country asking them to speed up evictions of occupied buildings, starting with around 90 housing occupations located in the capital. Most of these house low-income families and pensioners on the waiting list for social housing.

The new directives would allow local governments to bypass a circular by the former interior minister that asked them to find alternatives for residents before proceeding with evictions. 

“Enclaves where the state and legality are absent are no longer tolerated. We promised it, we are doing it. And it’s just the beginning,” said Salvini in a tweet, as bulldozers razed the tents activists and refugees had just rebuilt after a gust of bad weather destroyed the camp last week.