Greece Opposes Libya Maritime Zones Claims in Letter to UN

H-Tayea

In a letter to the United Nations secretary-general, Greece’s permanent representative to the UN, Evangelos Sekeris, expressed Athens’ complete opposition to Libya’s claims regarding the limits of its maritime zones, as reflected in verbal communication from the Tripoli government to Cairo.

According to Greek diplomatic sources on Thursday, Libya wrote to the UN secretary-general on February 13 claiming maritime zones that Greece said, in a letter also to the UN official, affect Greek sovereign rights.

Greece’s permanent representative to the UN contested the claims in a letter to the UN head dated April 24, while diplomatic sources explained that the maritime borders claimed in maps appended to the Libyan letter are based on the Turkish-Libyan memorandum of 2019, which is legally invalid.

Sekeris noted that the alleged eastern maritime border of Libya violates the Greek exclusive economic zone as delimited, in accordance with international law, by the agreement between Greece and Egypt for the delimitation of the EEZ between the two countries, signed on August 6, 2020. In practice, though, this letter is supporting Cairo, with which Athens is coordinating at the level of the UN against the Tripoli government.

Sekeris reiterated that the 2019 Turkish-Libyan maritime borders memorandum is illegal and invalid in terms of international law and the Libyan political agreement of 2015, which also requires ratification by the country’s parliament, which has not done so.

These claims, he said, on the part of Libya are in flagrant violation of international law and pose a threat to peace and stability in the Mediterranean.

The letter also noted, among other things, that Athens remains willing to resolve its disputes with all neighboring countries in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In particular, it stated that “while reserving all its rights under international law, Greece remains firmly committed to resolving any delimitation issue with neighboring countries in the Eastern Mediterranean by peaceful means, in good faith and in accordance with the law of the sea, as it has already done with Italy and Egypt.”