Athens-Tripoli relations in crisis mode
Greek FM Dendias refuses to meet his Libyan counterpart, travels on to rival Benghazi
Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias’ planned visit on Thursday to Tripoli, Libya to meet the head of Libya’s Presidential Council, Mohamed Yunus al-Menfi, a former ambassador to Greece, ended in a diplomatic incident when Dendias refused to meet with the Tripoli-based government’s foreign minister, Najla Mangoush, and, as a result, Libya recalled its ambassador to Athens.
Dendias departed Tripoli without disembarking and flew to Benghazi, Libya’s rival center of power in the east, where he met with Eastern Libyan Commander Khalifa Haftar.
The plane carrying Dendias and the Greek delegation to Benghazi flew there via Malta’s FIR, after the Tripoli side refused to approve the flight plans to Benghazi.
“Today’s visit to Libya, as scheduled, started from Tripoli, where I was to meet with President Menfi. However, Ms Mangoush, the foreign minister of the Libyan Transitional Government [Government of National Unity], tried to force her presence at the airport so that I would have to meet with her. As a result, I cut short my visit to Tripoli and departed for Benghazi, where the schedule was followed, as planned,” Dendias told reporters Thursday.
The Tripoli-based government has irked Greece by signing two agreements with Turkey: one, in 2019, delimiting the maritime jurisdictions of the two countries, even though they are non-neighboring, with Egypt and Greece standing in the way; and the second, signed earlier this year, allowing Turkey to explore for oil and natural gas on Libyan soil. The former agreement, condemned internationally, is based on Turkish claims that islands, such as Crete, cannot have a continental shelf.
Greece’s position is that it awaits the formation of a nationally accepted Libyan government to discuss bilateral maritime issues and that, meanwhile, does not accept the Tripoli government’s legal standing to sign deals with Turkey, especially when they encroach on Greece’s own interests and sovereignty.
Seeing that Turkey had an outsize influence in Tripoli, Greece appeared at one point to throw in its lot with Haftar, whose military campaign to seize Tripoli ultimately fell far short of that goal.
Dendias then went to Tobruk, a city to the east of Benghazi that serves as the seat of Libya’s parliament, which has condemned Tripoli’s deals with Turkey.
