Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis is embarking on a two-city diplomatic push in Libya this week, visiting both Benghazi and Tripoli in a bid to maintain active channels with the country’s rival power centers.

Gerapetritis travels to Benghazi on Saturday to meet with Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army, and attend the inauguration of Greece’s new general consulate building in the city. Greece and Italy are the only European countries with a general consulate in Benghazi, alongside non-European states with vital regional interests, including Turkey and Egypt.

Talks in Benghazi will cover migration, investment, and economic cooperation. Gerapetritis is also expected to reiterate Greece’s opposition to the 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime memorandum – an agreement Athens regards as illegitimate.

Ankara has been pressing Benghazi to ratify the accord, which has not been approved by Libya’s House of Representatives, based in the country’s east.

The visit builds on months of intensifying contacts. Since Gerapetritis’ last trip to Benghazi in July, a series of high-level meetings have followed: Haftar’s son Belqasim, who directs Libya’s development and reconstruction fund, visited Athens in September; another son, Khaled, head of the Eastern Libyan Armed Forces, came in November; and House of Representatives Speaker Aguila Saleh visited Athens in December. In January, Deputy Foreign Minister Haris Theoharis led a business delegation to Benghazi.

After returning to Athens on Saturday evening, Gerapetritis will travel to Tripoli on April 1, where he will meet officials of the Government of National Unity.

Athens and Tripoli have already established technical committees to explore maritime boundary delimitation – an effort to revive a process frozen since 2019.

Meanwhile, Turkey expressed irritation over the deployment of Greek forces to Cyprus following ballistic threats against British bases there. The head of Turkey’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, Fuat Oktay, claimed that Cyprus had become “a bomb that could explode.”

Source: Εkathimerini.com