The final preparatory meeting of the committee assigned by the Libyan Minister of Interior to assess the operational needs of the Ghadames-Debdeb Libyan Algerian border crossing was held yesterday at the headquarters of the Interior Ministry’s Department of Relations and Cooperation.
The Ministry reported that the meeting was attended by all the components concerned with the border port, in the presence of representatives of the concerned Ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs, Transportation, Health, and Economy, as well as representatives of the security, regulatory and military agencies, and a member of the Ghadames Municipal Council.
The meeting dealt with reviewing all the minutes of previous meetings and the committee’s conclusion regarding the necessary operational needs at the various legal, administrative, technical and service levels so that the crossing is in the required readiness in preparation for its opening, and referring the recommendations to the concerned authorities to complete the remaining communication arrangements.
Several previous announcements of reopening
It must be recalled that since last year there have been numerous false alerts about the imminent reopening of the border crossing.
For example, in July 2021, during a meeting with Abdalla Fellah the head of the Libyan Business Council (LBC), the LBC quoted Algerian Ambassador Kamal Hejazi confirming the readiness of Algeria to reopen the land border crossing. It stated that Hejazi had said that it was up to the discretion of the Libyan authorities in determining the opening date.
Libya’s former Minister of Interior, Khaled Mazen, and his Algerian counterpart, Kamel Beldjoud, were quoted by the official Libyan state news agency, LANA, agreeing last November to open the border crossing and to organize training courses in the field of police and civil protection.
In December last year the Algerian Minister of Trade, Kamel Rezig, had announced the reopening of the Debdeb-Ghadames land border crossing ‘‘within a few days’’ for commercial traffic.
On the Libyan side, in March last year, Libya’s Customs Authority had announced that preparations were ongoing for the reopening of trade at the Libyan-Algerian Ghadames-Debdeb border crossing.
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