If Europe targets people-smugglers in Libya unilaterally it will endanger the ongoing peace process and solve nothing, according to the Salvation Government’s Foreign Minister Muhammed El-Ghirani. He tells Mark Micallef Tripoli has been begging the EU for help to tackle migration.

The EU may have finally “woken up” to the migration crisis facing the Mediterranean but European frontline states and Libya, especially a seasoned diplomat like Muhammed El-Ghirani, have been dealing with this thorny problem for years.

When he talks about the subject, he can go back to agreements and statements made when his country was ruled by Muammar Gaddafi. Back then, as charges d’affaires in Malta for five years, he used to relay the message that Libya needed Europe’s help to deal with migration. The problem is too big for Libya to face on its own, the diplomatic line went.

Ten years later, he found himself travelling to Malta repeating that same message last week, this time representing a government in Tripoli which sees itself as the true representative of the revolution which toppled Gaddafi – as opposed to the internationally-recognised government in Tobruk which it accuses of having too many corrupt former cronies of the dictator within its ranks.

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