Tripoli protests prospecting south of Crete
The interim government of Tripoli claims Greece is conducting illegal prospecting south of Crete in areas it says are under Libya’s jurisdiction.
The issue was raised last week through a letter sent to the Greek ambassador, Nikos Garilidis.
Tellingly, the letter was delivered shortly before the meeting between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, raising suspicion that Turkey had a hand in the matter.
Turkey exerts considerable influence on the government of Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, as demonstrated by the Turkish-Libyan maritime memorandum and the agreements linked to it for joint Turkish-Libyan research within the alleged Libyan continental shelf. All these agreements were concluded by Dbeibah’s government and his predecessor, Fayez al-Sarraj, in return for Ankara’s support in the Libyan civil war.
Greek sources have told Kathimerini that “the Greek Embassy received a note verbale regarding the prospecting conducted south of Crete, which will be duly answered in the coming days by the Greek Foreign Ministry.” Greece, they added, “always follows international law in all its actions.”
Athens is expected to respond mainly in order to record its reaction (probably with a note verbale), and not, of course, that it considers that the Libyan allegations have any basis in fact.
Libya’s demarche concerned the seismic surveys completed weeks ago by the Norwegian vessel Ramform Hyperion, which is no longer even sailing in the Mediterranean but in the North Sea off Norway.
The Dbeibah government is essentially challenging the delimitation used by Greece for the concession of maritime areas west and southwest of Crete (under the law of Yannis Maniatis 4001/2011), according to which, in the absence of an agreement between Athens and Tripoli, the median line is taken as the limit.
Tripoli disputes the starting line of measurement for the calculation of the median line. Tripoli has also closed the Gulf of Sidra, in a move that has been questioned internationally as to its validity.
