“Pact to stop #migrants” Prime Minister @GiorgiaMeloni on mission to #Libya #January 28 @francescamusac2
Italy in Libya meets the Haftar wall. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, together with Foreign Minister Tajani and Interior Minister Piantedosi, are in Tripoli today. The visit, however, will not include a stopover in Benghazi, apparently at the behest of the general who declined to receive the Italian delegation. Officially, Haftar has announced that he is abroad for health reasons. But according to local sources, the Cyrenaica strongman is in Libya but has no intention of meeting Giorgia Meloni.
The reason would be linked to the gas agreement which, according to Haftar, is not shared. Indeed, Haftar and Fathi Bashagha, the prime minister appointed by the parallel parliament of Tobruk, do not recognize Tripoli’s prime minister, Abdul Hamid Mohammed Dbeibeh. But not only. The general has strong ties with Russia, which is currently very present in Cyrenaica. So a month ago, CIA chief William Burns flew to Libya with the intention of discussing Russian influence in Cyrenaica.
The United States’ aim is to reduce Moscow’s influence over all of Europe, and to that end it would also have facilitated Italy’s gas agreements with Algeria and Libya. Meloni and his ministers will therefore only have one meeting with Dbeibeh, head of the Tripoli government, to whom a memorandum on immigration prepared in Italy by the Ministry of the Interior will also be submitted. The agreement provides for the sending of patrol boats to the coast guard, some decommissioned by Italy, others new and financed by Europe. On the other hand, Libya undertakes to counteract the flow that starts from the coast and heads towards our country, even if it is not clear how.
This is a point on which the European Union also intervened yesterday, specifying that “we have never, never financed the Libyan coastguard and we will not do so, but we are providing support in the form of equipment related to the ships – said the spokesman of Foreign Affairs of the European Commission, Peter Stano – The objective of our cooperation with Libya is to improve migration management and therefore our support to the Libyan coast guard aims to improve the capacity of rescue, search and rescue operation particularly in Libyan territory is not funding this organization.
This would be, at this moment, the maximum that the Italian government would have achieved, but the importance and political weight of the trip to Libya by the prime minister accompanied by two important ministers remains. The previous governments, in fact, abandoned the Libyan dossier and the long absence of Italy, given the critical situation on the ground, facilitated the enlargement of other realities. Now, however, a new phase can begin. Only yesterday, therefore, on the eve of Meloni’s trip to Libya, Farhat Bengdara, president of the Libyan national oil company (Noc), announced through the Bloomberg agency that the investment of US$8 billion that Eni is preparing to make in Libya, and announced today, is the largest in the last 25 years. “The energy sector has not seen investment of this magnitude for over a quarter of a century, said Bengdara – It sends a clear message to the international business community that the Libyan state has moved beyond the political risk phase.”
But it could also be a message to other European countries from Italy that, perhaps, could once again play a role in North Africa. The decision to go to Tripoli together with two ministers, avoiding delegating as in the past, seems to have been a precise choice by the prime minister with the aim of restoring Italian influence in Libya and at the same time decreasing dependence on Russian gas. .
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
