On Saturday, Italy's Foreign Minister Luigi Di Mayo has stressed that his country would like to cooperate with Turkey to work for lasting peace and political solution in Libya.
Di Mayo's remarks came during a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlev Cawushoglu in Ankara.
The Italian Foreign Minister affirmed that freezing and exacerbating the conflict would lead to the pision of the country, calling for ending the flow of arms, violating the United Nations arms embargo, as well as expelling mercenaries in Libyan territory.
Italy and Libya
Italy's foreign minister indicated that the Libyan National Army (LNA) forces continue to cause civilian casualties due to the bombs, explaining that Italy had assisted the GNA government by sending an Italian mine-clearing team from areas south of Tripoli.
Libya has been in turmoil since 2011 when a NATO-backed uprising toppled leader Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed.
Turkey is implementing a military deployment to Libya to shore up the UN-backed government while Haftar is backed by Egypt, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates.
In December 2019, the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) and Turkey signed two MoUs on defense and gas drilling eastern the Mediterranean. Turkey sent 1,500 officers and military experts to Libya to co-command the operations rooms of the GNA militias, and has been transporting arms by sea as well.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) had reported that Turkey transported 15,000 Syrian mercenaries into Libya, including 300 minors aged between 14-18, and that the majority of them belong to Sultan Murad armed group. In addition, 1,800 mercenaries arrived to training camps in Turkey before they move to the North African state.
In January, the Libyan National Army (LNA) recovered Sirte from the militias protecting the GNA. Nevertheless, the Libyan Armed Forces lost Oqba bin Nafea airbase in Al Watiyah district western the country and Tarhouna town, and retreated from Tripoli's outskirts. Yet, the LNA has downed around 70 Turkish drones piloted from the capital's Mitiga Airbase.
The GNA is a non-elected government that is recognized by the United Nations. It was formed as provided by the Skhirat Agreement signed in 2015 to be an interim government, and was supposed to dissolve after 1-2 years. Hence, it is considered unconstitutional, particularly it was not formed by elected House of Representatives based in Tobruk.
In 2015, Egypt launched airstrikes against the sites that were held by the Islamic State (IS) to avenge the murder of 21 Egyptian Christian expats.
Libyan Minister of Foreign Affairs Al Hady Al Huweij – representing the Tobruk-based government – welcomed Egypt's call to hold an urgent Arab League meeting to discuss the Turkish aggression against the North African state.
The minister advocated the activation of the joint Arab defense, and the adoption of the Cairo Declaration underlining a political solution for the crisis.