By Libya Herald staff.
Tunis, 7 April 2015:
The president of the House of Representatives, Ageela Saleh Gwaider, is due to arrive in . . .[restrict]Rome this evening for talks tomorrow with the head of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, and other Italian officials. According to a senior Libyan diplomatic source in Rome, Gwaider is being accompanied the Foreign Minister, Mohamed Dairi, and Health Minister Rida Menshawi. They will be meeting with their opposite Italian numbers, the source said.
They are due to return to Libya tomorrow evening.
Libya is on the also agenda in separate talks tomorrow in Rome hosted by Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni. The Foreign Ministers of Algeria, Abdelkader Messahel, and of Egypt, Sameh Al-Shukri, will join him to discuss coordinating their countries’ efforts over the security crisis in Libya and combatting terrorism spreading from it, both in North Africa and potentially across the Mediterranean.
The latter meeting was originally intended to take place on 19 March but had to be postponed at the last minute because events in Egypt at the time necessitated Shukri remain in Cairo.
There has been an unspoken rivalry between Algeria and Egypt over Libya, with Algiers regularly stating its firm opposition to any intervention by anyone to help solve the Libya crisis, unlike Cairo which has backed action whether by the Arab League or other parties.
Italy too has supported intervention. Gentiloni, who has previously stated that Italy would join an international mission to help stabilise Libya if approved by the UN, said in an interview published today in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera that military action in the fight against terrorism was “inevitable”.
The tripartite meeting, in which Dairi will not be taking part, is said to have been initially promoted by the Egyptian and Algerian heads of intelligence – Khaled Fawzy and Mohamed Buzeit – who understood that the need for collaboration against a common threat took priority over any rivalry.
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