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By Hadi Fornaji.
Tunis, 1 September 2016:
The EU’s ambassador to Yemen, Bettina Muscheidt, is to be its new envoy to Libya. She replaces Nataliya Apostolova whose appointment as head of the EU Office in Kosovo was announced in July and who took up the post today.
From Germany, Muscheidt who is expected to move later this month to Tunis where the EU’s Libya mission is based, has experience of regional hotspots. She has run the EU’s mission to Yemen since 2012 and prior to that was in charge of the Afghanistan desk of the European External Action Service (EEAS – the EU’s “foreign ministry”).
Meanwhile, the EU’s Border Assistance Mission in Libya (EUBAM) has announced that has appointed Italian Colonel Vincenzo Tagliaferri (53) as its head of Mission. He takes over as of today, 1 September, from Antti Juhani Hartikainen.
An Arabic speaker, he was previously justice and home affairs attaché with the Italian permanent representative at the EU but knows Libya well, having worked in a number of posts at the Italian embassy in Tripoli before, during and after the revolution. Between 2012 and 2013 he worked with EEAS on the development of EUBAM in Libya and from 2013 until last year, headed of the Italian interior ministry’s office at embassy and running training programmes for the Libyan police.
