Washington, Apr 10 (IANS): A senior White House foreign policy official has pushed a plan to partition Libya, and once drew a picture of how the country could be divided into three areas on a napkin during a meeting with a European diplomat, a media report said on Monday.

Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Donald Trump under pressure over his past ties with Hungarian far-right groups, suggested the idea of partition in the weeks leading up to the US President's inauguration, an official with knowledge of the matter told the Guardian.

The European diplomat responded that this would be "the worst solution" for Libya.

Gorka is vying for the job of presidential special envoy to Libya.

The map he drew on the napkin cut Libya into three sections, apparently based on the old Ottoman provinces of Cyrenaica in the east, Tripolitania in the north-west and Fezzan in the south-west.

Gorka's rivals for the envoy job include Pete Hoekstra, a former congressman and lobbyist, and Phillip Escaravage, a former US intelligence official who worked on Libya for more than a decade, reports the Guardian.

Libya has been mired in a conflict between two competing governments since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 after a NATO-led intervention.