UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took up his job this year at a time when the in-basket in his new office was suddenly filling with crises. To Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have been added rampant nuclear North Korea, blustering and belligerent US President Donald Trump and genocidal Myanmar led by the fallen international peace idol Aung San Suu Kyi.

At the UN General Assembly this week Guterres, reflecting on the number of dangerous conflicts, said there was one that now had an historic opportunity for resolution. He was speaking of Libya. Since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has lurched deeper into chaos. The militias that helped bring down the dictator refused to disarm.

Instead they set up local fiefdoms where they run profitable rackets. They smuggle abroad heavily-subsidized fuel. They are responsible for trafficking ten of thousands of migrant, from Sub-Saharan Africa, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They also have a useful sideline in kidnapping anyone whose family is deemed wealthy enough the pay a ransom.

Libya also has three rival governments. There is that of Abdullah Thinni appointed by the House of Representatives (HoR), the parliament elected in 2014, which controls much of the east through military strongman Khalifa Hafter and the Libyan National Army. Then there is the National Salvation Government installed after the 2014 Muslim Brotherhood coup in the west, which, though ousted from Tripoli, still has the backing of Brotherhood militias. And finally there is the internationally-recognized Presidency Council (PC) led by Faiez Serraj and its Government of National Accord (GNA). This has not, however, been recognized by the parliament which, forced from the capital, operates from the eastern town of Tobruk.

The UN’s Libyan mission UNSMIL has spent the last six years trying to broker reconciliation. In 2016 Serraj and his eight fellow PC members were installed in Tripoli with high hopes that change had finally arrived. More than a year on and Libya’s chaos has only deepened. When he is not jetting around for international meetings, Serraj sits in the capital protected by militias, issuing decrees on an almost daily basis, which have absolutely no effect on the power cuts, lack of liquidity in the banks and the rising tide of criminality.

This year UNSMIL got a new chief, the Lebanese academic and politician Ghassan Salamé. It is his new action plan, put together since he took up the job in August and embarked on a round of consultations around the country that Guterres believes presents this historic opportunity.

The key to the new plan remains the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) hammered out by Libyans in the Moroccan resort of Skhirat in December 2015. The LPA has been not been accepted by the HoR, so Salamé’s plan is to call a National Conference (NC) in which the parliament will participate along with other bodies to approve an amended LPA. Meantime the Constitution Drafting Assembly, which has thus far failed to agree a new constitution, will resume its work guided by recommendations from the NC.

As plans go, Salamé’s at least has the virtue of being different, but trying to get rival regions and their leaders to agree on anything, except the need to agree, has thus far proved as easy as herding cats. Nevertheless, it must be hoped that at last Libya’s rivals really will grasp Guterres’ “historic” opportunity.