Libya: Maritime Talks With Greece To Resume

Greece and Libya have agreed to hold talks on marking out their maritime zones in the Mediterranean. Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis made public the information on April 14, 2021, after a meeting with the head of the Libyan Presidential Council, Mohamed al-Menfi. In a statement after the meeting, Mitsotakis said the two leaders “agreed on the immediate resumption of talks between Greece and Libya on the delimitation of the maritime zones”. Mitsotakis said, his country is aimed at reseting relations with Libya, which were soured by the Tripoli government signing of a 2019 maritime boundary agreement with Greece’s Mediterranean rival Turkey. “I want you to know that in Greece, Libya will always have a stable friend and ally within the European Union,” Mitsotakis told al-Menfi who intend, stressed the historical ties and friendship between the two countries and described Greece as the main “gateway” of Libya to the European Union.

Since the putting in place of the interim government last month (March 16, 2021), replacing two rival administrations that had governed the eastern and western parts of a country torn apart by war, Greece and Cyprus have been putting pressure on the Libyan authorities to cancel the agreement