ISTANBUL: EU Council President Charles Michel arrived in Turkey Saturday for talks with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan on reducing tensions in Libya after Ankara began deploying troops there.
President Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin called Wednesday for a ceasefire
in the conflict-ravaged country.
Michel tweeted Saturday that he would meet with Erdogan "on how #EU and Turkey can work together to de-escalate the situation in the Middle East and in Libya".
Mired in chaos since the NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi eight years ago, Libya's military malaise has deepened further this year.
Eastern strongman Khalifa Haftar in April launched an offensive against the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) -- a military campaign that a UN panel of experts says has "unleashed new transfers of military equipment" to Libya.
Turkey last week started deploying troops in Libya to back GNA leader Fayez al-Sarraj.
After his visit to Istanbul, EU leader Michel is due in Egypt for a meeting late Saturday with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who supports Haftar.
His visit to Turkey is his foreign trip first since being appointed EU Council president last month.
Turkey is nominally in the process of joining the EU but the accession talks have been frozen as concern grows in Europe over the erosion of rights under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
EU members including Greece and Cyprus are also in dispute with Ankara over the issue of how to share hydrocarbon deposits discovered in the region in recent years.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.