(Picture: Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Angelino Alfano, filed pic. Source: ANSA)
by Alessandro Pagano Dritto (Twitter: @paganodritto)
[August 20th, 2017 – Italy] On August 13th, 2017, just few days after Marshal Khalifa Hafter was interviewed by Corriere della Sera, La Stampa‘s journalist Francesca Schianchi interviewed Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Angelino Alfano who replied to some Hafter’s statements and focused on the Mediterranean issue.
Alfano apparently opens up to Hafter, saying Italy agrees on him having a primary role in Libya’s future.
The one below is the unofficial translation, from Italian to English, of the interview; not of the full interview, because the last few questions were not about Libya.
[Read the translated Corriere della Sera’s interview to Marshal Khalifa Hafter on Between Libya and Italy]
“Wind is changing on the other side of the Mediterranean: we must quickly fix our sails and use it to stem the traffic of human beings.
What do you mean, Minister Alfano?
Serraj’s Libyan government called on Italy for help, it is ready to create a Safe and Rescue (SAR) area in its own waters, to collaborate with Europe and to invest in the Coast Guard: all of that means a fresh balance in the Mediterranean. And some inquiries by the Sicilian prosecutors created the right cultural framework to gain a code for the NGOs.
Yet, Medici Senza Frontiere (Medicians Without Borders, MSF) announced yesterday it was to suspend the rescues: not a good news, isn’t it?
MSF’s decision too, is in the framework of the fresh balance: those waters no longer belong to anybody. They belong to Libya.
With the risk, as MSF’s President claimed, of an higher amount of dead in the sea and of people [remaining] in Libya.
We must avoid people dying in the sea by reducing the departures and by economically supporting the Libyan camps in order them to reach out a right standard.
Your deputy [Minister of Foreign Affairs Mario] Giro says taking back the migrants to Libya means condemning them to an inferno.
The real investment is the economical one: we should fund UNHCR and IOM in order them to support us in Libya. I discussed about that with the fresh UN envoy Ghassam Salame just few days ago.
Meanwhile, situation remains like that. Is it Realpolitik? Are we playing as we’re not aware of what happens in Libya just to solve the problem in our coasts?
We made two choices: stopping the criminal gains of the traffickers – because less people leave, less the traffickers gain – and funding the UN agencies to have Libyan camps with adequate standards over the human rights.
General Hafter asked yesterday for 20 billions to Europe in order to control the flows. What’s your answer to that?
It’s what we’ve been saying for months. Once we closed the Balkan way by a multimillionaire agreement with Turkey, it’s just an illusion to think the Libyan issue can be solved with some million euros. An enormous – I repeat: enormous – economical investment is needed, by Europe into Libya and into Africa. Europe must decide whether the migrations’ file is an absolute priority as well as economy is: we believe it is.
Is it true what Hafter said, that number two of our [secret] services begged his pardon as Italy did not agree with him the mission to Libya?
I have worked in the institutions enough to know that intelligence’s activities are secret: I won’t confirm nor I’ll deny.
President Macron legitimized Hafter as being a representative as well as Serraj is: can we do it as well? Could someone from the government meet him?
I’d see nothing bad or strange in it: we’ve always supported Serraj’s government UN legitimized, but we’ve also been the first to say Hafter deserves a major role in the reconstruction of Libya, under the civil institutions. It would be just an illusion, yet, to think they’re the only guardians of the Libyan solution. There’ve been too many mediators and too few results, up to now: it went that way as Kobler’s mandate was about to finish. Now, with the new UN envoy, may every Country that have worked for a solution – in good faith, I presume – hand over to him its own results.
[…]”
Between Libya And Italy 
