(Author: Libyan Gazette Editorial Staff)
The African Union’s High-Level Committee on Libya held a meeting on Tuesday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to discuss the situation in Libya. Algeria, Congo, Egypt, Mauritania, Niger, South Africa and Uganda are all members of the AU’s High-Level Committee.
Musa Koni, a member of the Libyan Presidency Council, represented Libya at the AU meeting.
Other diplomats present at the meeting included the Republic of Congo’s president Denis Sassou Nguesso, president of Niger Mahamadou Issoufou, South African president Jacob Zuma, Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir, Uganda’s president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, in addition to the Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn.
Martin Kobler, the UN’s special envoy to Libya, was also present at the meeting, as well as Jakaya Kikwete, former Tanzanian president who is now the AU’s special envoy to Libya.
Representatives from African nations came together to discussion Libya’s situation and review regional and international support to the country. The president of Chad Idriss Déby Itno, who chaired the meeting said, “there is no military solution” for Libya.
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the commissioner of the African Union, added that the “dire situation in Libya cannot be allowed to continue.”
The meeting took place during a week when scores of refugees from various African countries drowned in the Mediterranean Sea soon after they departed Libya for Europe.
The refugee crisis in the Mediterranean region significantly worsened after the Libyan uprising in 2011 that brought down the Gaddafi regime. Around 4,220 refugees died on their way to Europe so far this year, the highest number on record, said the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The EU has set-up a training program for the Libyan Coast Guard as an attempt to stop the mass migration of mostly African refugees to Europe. On Monday, the Libyan Coast Guard rescued 115 refugees, who were later transferred to to the department responsible for illegal immigration in Libya’s interior ministry.
