Four leading European powers on Tuesday condemned Turkey's involvement in the Libyan crisis following emergency talks in Brussels after Ankara sent troops to support the UN-backed Tripoli government.
The foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and Italy called for a halt to fighting and an end to "continuing outside interference" in a joint statement.
EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell went further and criticised Turkey by name in a move likely to inflame already tense ties with Ankara, which announced on Sunday that its troops had begun deploying to Libya.
"We asked for a ceasefire and we asked also to stop escalation and to external interference, which has been increasing in the past days," Borrell told reporters.
"It is obvious that this makes a reference to the Turkish decision to intervene with their troops in Libya which is something that we reject and which increases our worries about the situation in Libya."
Europe is scrambling to respond to two escalating crises - Libya and Iran, which has threatened revenge for the US killing of Qasem Soleimani, one of its top generals, and announced another step back from the crumbling 2015 nuclear deal.
The European Commission has said it wants a bigger role in geopolitics but the EU often finds itself hamstrung on foreign policy by internal differences. It took three days for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to put out a statement on Soleimani's killing.
Tuesday's hastily convened Brussels meeting came after Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar's forces seized the coastal city of Sirte as part of his offensive aimed at unseating the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA).
While Turkey and Qatar are supporting the GNA, Haftar receives backing from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
"The EU is of the firm conviction that there is no military solution to the Libyan crisis and that a protracted conflict will only bring more misery to ordinary people," the ministers said in their joint statement.
"Continuing outside interference is fuelling the crisis. The more the Libyan warring parties rely on foreign military assistance, the more they give external actors undue influence on sovereign Libyan decisions, to the detriment of the country's national interests and of regional stability."
The EU criticism follows a blunt warning from US President Donald Trump to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the weekend not to interfere in the conflict.
The oil-rich North African country has been plunged into chaos since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that killed longtime leader Moamer Kadhafi.
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