Libya’s Tripoli government will not accept Europe bombing sites presumed to belong to Libyan people smugglers and would “confront it”, the Salvation Government’s Foreign Minister is warning.
Muhammed El-ghirani told Times of Malta that nobody from the EU had consulted Tripoli about these plans and insisted such action could not be taken unilaterally.
“We have been doing our best to get Europe to cooperate with us to deal with illegal immigration but they keep telling us we’re not the internationally recognised government. Now they cannot just decide to take this action, they have to speak to us,” he said.
Moreover, he questioned the very method being contemplated.
“You cannot just decide to hit. Let’s say you strike a particular site, how will you know that you did not hit an innocent person, a fisherman? Does Europe have pinpoint accuracy? So we are saying, let’s do this together,” Dr El-ghirani said.
A seasoned diplomat who also served as first secretary in Malta for a while, Dr El-ghirani submits a staple argument that has been made since Gaddafi’s time: “We cannot be expected to secure the coast without also securing the desert. That would mean that you leave the problem to us.”
His reaction comes as prime ministers from the 28-member EU bloc convene in Brussels today to discuss a plan of action.
One of the suggestions mooted comes from Italy’s Matteo Renzi, who is lobbying for the “targeting” of smugglers inside Libya, to destroy the boats they send migrants on, for instance.
The summit was called in the wake of the worst recent migrant shipwreck seen in the Mediterranean, where an estimated 800 people lost their lives after their vessel capsized some 30 miles off Libya.
Mr El-ghirani argued yesterday that besides being unacceptable to Libyans because it would undermine their sovereignty, Europe’s targeting of the Libyan coast would not address the issue.
“We get thousands of migrants from Niger. When a few months ago I went to speak to my counterpart there, he said to me, migration is not a priority right now because we’re dealing with (the terrorist organisation) Boko Haram. So if Europe is only interested in sealing the coast, then what we’re saying is that this is Libya’s problem.”
Read a more extensive interview in The Sunday Times of Malta.