Turkish FM in Libya to endorse newly founded national government

Turkish FM in Libya to endorse newly founded national government

ANKARA
Turkish FM in Libya to endorse newly founded national government

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Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu departed to Libya early on May 30 for a one-day visit to issue an endorsement for a recently founded national government and start a process to reopen the country’s embassy in Tripoli. 

“The meetings of our minister will constitute an important opportunity for our country to underline once again that it stands with the people of Libya and the National Consensus Government during this hard transitional period,” read a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry on May 30. 

Çavuşoğlu was scheduled to meet Fayez al-Mustafa Sarraj, the head of the Presidential Council of the NCG, and Tahir Siyala, the foreign minister of the new administration. A package of humanitarian aid composed of food and medicine will be extended to the Libyan institutions on the sidelines of the visit, the ministry said.    

The visit will also provide an opportunity to begin procedures to reopen the Turkish Embassy in Tripoli that had to be closed due to the deteriorating security conditions in the country in 2014.  

Çavuşoğlu will travel to Rwanda following his talks in Libya.

Libya was sharply divided in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising that ousted Moammar Gadhafi, descending into growing instability that resulted in the creation of two main rival political groups, one in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk, as well as a statelet controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Intense U.N.-led efforts resulted in a political agreement in late 2015 as the basis of the National Consensus Government that began functioning on March 30.