By Jamie Prentis.
Tunis, 24 January 2017:
The new German ambassador to Libya, Christian Buck, has made his first visit to Tripoli to meet Presidency Council (PC) head Faiez Serraj.
Ways of strengthening German-Libyan relations as an assessment of whether of not the German embassy could move back to the Libyan capital were reported among issues discussed.
Germany closed its Tripoli embassy in 2014 as militia fighting wreaked havoc throughout the city.
The PC’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamed Taha Siala, also attended today’s meeting.
Only in office for a couple of months, Buck’s also visited a detention centre for illegal migrants in Abu Sleem, together with representatives from the International Organisation of Migration. The German ambassador spoke with a number of those currently detained to assess the living conditions inside the facilities.
Many migrants leaving Libya and crossing the Mediterranean Sea head for Germany. Over the course of 2015 and 2016, it received at total of nearly 1.2 million asylum seekers.
