Rashid Khechana – Rome and Algeria do not want to establish relations with the military governor of the eastern region, retired general Khalifa Haftar, and deal with the government of Abdel Hamid al-Dabaiba, as it is the only legitimate government in Libya.
Algeria and Italy formed a driving force towards achieving a peaceful solution to the conflict in Libya, with the blessing of the United Nations. The visit that Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni started yesterday to Tripoli, after her visit to Algeria, confirmed the pivotal place that the North African region occupies in Italy’s regional strategy, especially in the current circumstances. It was noted that Meloni’s visit to Algeria and Tripoli almost coincided with a tour by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Taiani to Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia, to discuss the Libyan crisis and its repercussions with officials in the three countries, which are close in their position on ways to settle the civil conflict in Libya. It is clear that Rome and Algeria do not want to establish relations with the military governor of the eastern region, retired General Khalifa Haftar, and deal with the government of Abdel Hamid al-Dabaiba, as the only legitimate government in Libya. Certainly, this position angers the appointed prime minister from Parliament, Fathi Bashagha, who was unable to obtain the recognition of significant countries for his government.
The Italian Prime Minister has chosen to make her first foreign visit to the Maghreb region, starting from Algeria. This “reverence” is attributed to economic, political and security interests that Meloni did not hide, and they relate to four areas, the first of which is the increase in Algerian and Libyan gas flows to Italy, the second is confronting illegal immigration boats across the Mediterranean, and the third is containing Russian expansion in the countries of the Sahel and the Sahara, and the fourth is Eliminate the remaining members of the al-Qaeda network and ISIS in the southwest of Libya, northern Mali and Burkina Faso.
These axes are the titles of the electoral program of the coalition of the right and the far right, which won the recent elections in Italy. He intends to start implementing the new immigration decree, which adopts strict rules for dealing with boats of irregular migrants who set off from the southern coasts of the Mediterranean, especially from Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Meloni seeks to complete her visits to the Maghreb before the meeting of the Council of the European Union scheduled for the second week of next month, which will be devoted to the file of immigration of all kinds. The new Italian decree is strict with rescue ships, which are operated by relief organizations and groups advocating for the rights of immigrants, and which seize passengers in stranded boats, to save them from death at sea. Perhaps the most important thing, from the perspective of the Italians, is to secure the flow of gas and oil from Libya, after Italy suffered from the repercussions of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Italy is linked to Algeria and Libya by two pipelines to transport gas across the Mediterranean, and it may be said that the most important gain that the Italian prime minister obtained from her visit to Algeria is the new pipeline, which President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said that technical studies for its completion will be launched soon, stressing that he will transport four materials Simultaneously, they are gas, electricity, ammonia and hydrogen. Algeria currently supplies Italy with 40 percent of its needs of liquefied gas, and at the end of last month raised the quantities to more than 25 billion cubic meters. The capacity of the new pipeline will reach 29 billion cubic meters of liquefied gas. The current pipeline, which was established in the eighties of the last century, transports natural gas to the island of Sicily, and Tunisia obtains transit fees that secure about half of its consumption of natural gas.
Two new gas fields
In this context, Meloni assured her Arab interlocutors that the restoration of security and stability in North Africa is in the interest of Italy and the countries of the region at the same time. For his part, President Tebboune announced that, thanks to the new pipeline, Italy would become a distributor of gas to European countries, starting from Italy. The head of the National Oil Corporation, Farhat bin Qadara, estimated, in a statement to Bloomberg, the value of the agreement signed yesterday in Tripoli with the Eni group at $8 billion, which will be allocated for the development of two gas fields off the Libyan coast.
This project will, in one of its dimensions, compete with a huge gas project that will link Tangier in northern Morocco and Nigeria, which has the highest reserves of natural gas in the African continent, with a length of 3,000 km, along the Atlantic coasts. The King of Morocco and the President of Nigeria signed an agreement in 2016 to establish this project, which is increasingly important, with gas supplies from Russia to Western Europe faltering, or perhaps completely stopped.
In a parallel line, Algeria has established a partnership with Libya in the field of energy and is seeking to expand it in the future, especially after stability returns to it. The Libyan Minister of Oil and Gas, Mohamed Aoun, confirmed that his country needs more gas production to finance the state and operate power stations. Algeria and Libya cooperate in the field of gas production and marketing, as the Algerian Electricity Production Company (Sonalgas) completed more than two years ago the construction of a 160-megawatt power plant in Tripoli. The Algerian company’s teams were also able to restart the Khums station with a capacity of 260 megawatts. In the context, the Italian delegation obtained a deal to complete a project that has been frozen since 2013, which is to establish a station for the safe disposal of medical waste, according to international standards. The project will be implemented by the Italian company “Programa Penti”. Regarding the possibility of exporting Libyan gas to Italy, Minister Aoun stressed that Libya exports about 300 million cubic feet of gas to Italy daily, noting that his country has invited some Russian oil companies to return to work in exploration operations in Libya.
Free and transparent elections?
Rome agrees with Algeria, Turkey and Tunisia that bringing stability to Libya passes through a consensual electoral process among all Libyan components, according to what Foreign Minister Taiani said, in an impeachment session in the Italian House of Representatives a few days ago. Taiani accompanied the Prime Minister on her visit to Libya yesterday, as part of a high-level delegation that also included the Italian Minister of the Interior. The Italians say that their goal is to help hold free and transparent elections in Libya, before the end of 2023 in line with the mediation of the United Nations, stressing that this goal lies at the heart of their talks with all the actors that have influence in the Libyan situation.
And after Meloni, during her election campaign, called for imposing a naval blockade on the Libyan coasts, to prevent immigrant boats from setting off from them, she finally modified her harsh slogans, and began marketing an alternative plan, which is the “Mattie Plan” after Enrico Matti, the founder of the energy group “Eni”, who broke The control of the seven major western energy groups on the sector. The Italians believe that achieving stability in Libya is a crucial element in controlling the waves of irregular migration and addressing the terrorist threat, which emanates from the African Sahel region towards the Mediterranean basin, all the way to the southern European coasts.
The Italians do not hide the fact that they are pressuring, with Algeria and Turkey, the politicians and military leaders in Libya, to push them to agree on a calendar for a political solution, through which the date for holding credible elections is determined, which would confer legitimacy on the political leaders. The Italians and many Western countries hope that launching the political track and achieving civil peace will lead to the elimination of what they consider a “black point” in reference to the Libyan coasts. Statistics presented by the head of the General Command of the Italian Ports Authority, Giuseppe Olichino, in a briefing before the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and Transport in the Italian Parliament, showed that the majority of irregular migrants on average came from Libya, with an increase of 70 percent last year, i.e. 53 thousand illegal immigrants. According to Olishino, Italy witnessed the arrival of 105,000 illegal immigrants last year, by sea, which means an increase of 56 percent compared to 2021.
The Italians focus on the importance of the role of local coast guards in intercepting immigrant boats, especially on the two axes of flows, which are the Tripolitania region, which they say 33,000 set off from its coast, and the Cyrenaica region (northeast), which was the starting point for 20,000 illegal trips, while the number of drowned reached 1,373. These numbers sparked controversy between the right-wing and left-wing parties in the Italian parliament, as the deputy leader of the Democratic Party (left) and parliamentary deputy, Giuseppe Provenzano, confirmed that the only result of the implementation of the “Matte Decree” is the elimination of the activity of relief ships of non-governmental organizations, describing it as ” Shipwrecking Decree.
However, Meloni arrived in Tripoli, and the relations between the Libyan decision-makers are at their lowest point, after Aqila Saleh disavowed the agreement he reached with the head of the State Council, Khaled Al-Mishri, in Cairo, following more than ten meetings, within the framework of preparing a constitutional reference for the elections. This position returned the political track to square one, especially since Egypt, which followed the meetings from the beginning, and in the presence of intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, did not comment on Saleh’s retreat. It is likely that America and the European countries involved in the Libyan file are concerned about the collapse of understanding between the heads of the State Council and the House of Representatives. They also criticize Cairo for the fluidity of its positions and its lack of enthusiasm for holding credible general elections subject to the supervision of the international community. It is more likely that the US Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Affairs, Michelle Sison, who visited Algeria and was received by Tebboune, may have discussed the Libyan file with the Algerian president. Sison may have asked Tebboune to support Algeria in naming the US diplomat Kenneth Gluck, in second place, as assistant to the head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, Senegalese Abdullah Bathily. This endeavor, if true, indicates America’s desire to closely follow the interactions of the Libyan crisis, which is the role played by Stephanie Williams, the former advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
