by Ashraf Abdul Wahab
The Secretary-General of the Jeddah-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation has called on Libyans to remain united and rally around the “Transitional National Council as . . .[restrict]the sole legitimate representative”.
The call follows Tuesday’s demand by a conference in Benghazi for a federal Libya and its creation of Cyrenaica National Council. Many Libyans fear this could lead to a break-up of the country.
In a statement published Wednesday, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu appealed to Libyans “to preserve national unity and territorial integrity of Libya,” and renewed his call for ” Libyan people of different components” to rally around the Transitional National Assembly and support the interim government “at this important point in time”.
A call for Libyan unity also came on Wednesday from Egypt’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr.
He said Egypt keenly supported the unity of Libya. He expressed his country’s confidence in “the wisdom of the Libyan brothers and their ability to build a modern state”. He believed that they would be able establish a stable system in the country “that has long suffered from a lack of state institutions in the conventional sense under the previous regime”.
The minister also said that Egypt would never allow any activities on its territory by opponents of the Libyan revolution. He denied rumours about TV channels hostile to the revolution being aired by Egypt’s Nilesat satellite.
Amr said there was close cooperation between the governments of Egypt and Libya in particular on border control between the two countries, adding that issue of issue of extradition was being discussed. [/restrict]
