By Libya Herald reporter.
Tripoli, 11 November 2014:
Ambassadors and heads of diplomatic mission from ten African countries met yesterday with Mohamed Agheirani, . . .[restrict]the foreign minister in Omar Al-Hassi’s antigovernment in Tripoli.
“We were invited, and we decided to go and hear what he had to say”, Togolese Ambassador Nambeima Daoudou Wattara told the Libya Herald. He insisted, however, that no recognition of the Hassi administration was intended by the meeting. In his own country’s case, he added, it had made no statement about the situation in Libya.
As well as the Togolese ambassador, the other diplomats, according to LANA, were from the Central African Republic, Chad, the Comoros, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Sudan.
Although, the Libyan news agency LANA, which supports Libya Dawn, reported that the ten ambassadors and Agheirani discussed “ways of enhancing in all fields relations [between Libya and the countries represented at the meeting]”, Wattara said that the major concern had been embassy security. “There have been problems about security in diplomatic premises, some have been vandalised. We wanted to see what could be done.”
The presence of Niger, Chad and Sudan at the meeting has raised some diplomatic eyebrows despite Wattara’s insistence that it did not mean any recognition of the Hassi administration. All three states have said they recognise only the Thinni government and, in Sudan’s case, it has repeatedly stressed this in recent days. However, the meeting also coincided with the visit to Tripoli by Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti, who is trying mediate dialogue between the various Libya factions. [/restrict]
