Libya suspends FM for meeting Zionist minister
TRIPOLI: Libya’s internationally recognized prime minister has suspended his top diplomat after she met her Zionist counterpart, with news of the encounter triggering demonstrations in a country that does not recognize the Zionist entity. Oil-rich Libya, which plunged into chaos after dictator Muammar Gaddafi was toppled and killed in 2011, has been divided since 2014 between the UN-supported government of Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah in Tripoli and a rival administration based in the country’s east.
Angry protesters took to the streets of the capital and other western cities on Sunday night, blocking roads with burning tyres and waving Palestinian flags, after it emerged that Najla Al-Mangoush had met with her Zionist counterpart in Rome last week. Mangoush was “provisionally suspended and subject to an ‘administrative investigation’”, Dbeibah’s government said, hours after Zionist Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the “unprecedented” meeting had taken place.
On Monday, Libya’s Internal Security Agency (ISA) said Mangoush had not been authorized to leave the North African country after reports on social media that she had flown to Turkey overnight as the protests flared. Internet users had posted the tracking details from the FlightRadar website of a flight said to be carrying Mangoush from Mitiga airport in Tripoli to Istanbul. “Surveillance cameras will prove this” is false, the ISA said in a statement. Mangoush “is on the travel ban list until she submits to the investigation”, said the security agency.
Turkey’s Anadolu news agency, citing security sources, said Mangoush had already left for Istanbul following the diplomatic furor. There was no official confirmation of the flight from Ankara or Tripoli, however. The Libyan foreign ministry had in a statement defended the meeting with Cohen as a “chance and unofficial encounter”. The minister had reiterated “in a clear and unambiguous manner Libya’s position regarding the Palestinian cause”, it said, while accusing the Zionist entity of trying to “present this incident” as a “meeting or talks”.
The Zionist foreign ministry statement had quoted Cohen as saying that the two had discussed “the importance of preserving the heritage of Libyan Jews, which includes renovating synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in the country”. “Libya’s size and strategic location offer a huge opportunity for the (Zionist entity),” he added. The statement said the meeting in Rome had been hosted by Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. But on Monday the Zionist foreign ministry appeared to backtrack on Cohen’s statement, saying that neither it nor the minister had anything to do with the “leak” about his meeting with Mangoush.
The ministry did not offer details or clarify who was behind the so-called leak. “Contrary to what has been published, the leak regarding the meeting with Libya’s foreign minister did not come from the foreign ministry or the foreign minister’s office,” the ministry said in a statement released to journalists. Tajani’s office on Monday referred all questions to the Libyan and Zionist authorities.
However, an Italian diplomatic source said the Italian minister had not himself been present at the meeting. In recent years, the Zionist entity has pushed for normalizing ties with some Arab countries as part of US-backed deals known as the Abraham Accords. However, Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government has come under intense criticism from Arab states because of surging violence in the West Bank and for backing expansion of Zionist settlements in the occupied territory. – AFP
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