The Libyan-Turkish memorandum delineating common maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean is the product of Turkish blackmail to the embattled Libyan government and is totally devoid of substance, Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said Sunday.
“The Turkish move had been anticipated since July and a series of actions had been undertaken to prevent it,” Dendias told TV station Ant1. “Despite that, the Tripoli government, blackmailed by Turkey, obviously because of the advances made by General Haftar(‘s army) in recent days, signed the text,” he added.
Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar is the leader of the Libyan National Army, which is loyal to the so-called Tobruk government that controls the eastern part of Libya and is engaged in a civil war against the UN-recognized government of Libya based in Tripoli, the country’s capital in the western part. Haftar’s Army also has the support of the Libya House of Representatives, which has condemned the Libyan-Turkish memorandum.
“Our country will prepare a note that will be submitted to the United Nations and will take all those measures in the framework of international law and the law of the seas that will demonstrate the invalidity (of the memorandum),” Dendias said.
The Greek Foreign Minister also said that Greece and Egypt are already engaged in talks with a “tight time-table” to delineate their own Exclusive Economic Zones.
The controversial memorandum of understanding between Turkey and the UN-recognized but shaky interim government (GNA) in Tripoli, Libya, aimed to demarcate exclusive economic maritime zones between the two state has reportedly been activated, according to Turkey’s semi-official Anadolu news agency.
The weekend report claims that the Libyan justice ministry has asked relevant government services to implement two memoranda, signed on Nov. 27, with publication set for early 2020 in the Libyan government gazette.
The agreement was not ratified by Libya’s house of representatives, which is dominated by the rival eastern Libya-based LNA, led by Gen. Khalifa Haftar, but rather by members of a government council.
The GNA, albeit internationally recognized, controls only a portion of the country and is encircled around Tripoli.
A day earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the MoU was sent to the United Nations.
Turkey, which does not recognize the United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), has unilaterally applied its own particular view of maritime law, with a “Turkographic” method “erasing” all islands in the eastern Mediterranean, including the island republic of Cyprus and large Crete, in order to sketch lines on sea maps with willing partners – which, so far, has only included the shaky administration in Tripoli.
