CAIRO — Egypt and
Greece on Sunday said a deal allowing
Turkish hydrocarbon exploration in Libya’s Mediterranean waters was “illegal”
as Athens said it would oppose it by all “legal means”.
اضافة اعلان
On Monday, Turkey said it had signed a memorandum of
understanding on exploration for hydrocarbons in Libya’s seas with the
authorities in Tripoli.
“This agreement threatens stability and security in
the Mediterranean,” Greek Foreign Minister
Nikos Dendias said in Cairo, where
he met his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry.
The deal follows an agreement Turkey signed three
years ago with Tripoli that demarcated the countries’ shared maritime borders.
Greece, Egypt, and Cyprus believe the 2019 agreement
violates their economic rights in an area suspected to contain vast natural gas
reserves.
“We will use all legal means to defend our rights,”
Dendias added.
He said Tripoli “does not have the necessary
sovereignty over this area”, and that the agreement is therefore “illegal and
inadmissible”.
Shoukry charged that the mandate of the authorities
in Tripoli has “expired” and that “the government of Tripoli does not have the
legitimacy to sign agreements”.
A rival Libyan administration in the war-torn
country’s east — which since March has been attempting to take office in
Tripoli and also argues the government’s mandate has expired — has rejected the
accord.
Monday’s deal builds on an agreement signed between
Ankara and a previous Tripoli-based administration in 2019, at the height of a
battle for the capital after eastern-based military chief Khalifa Haftar
attempted to seize it by force.
The delivery of Turkish drones to Tripoli-based
forces shortly afterwards was seen as crucial in the victory over Haftar, who
was backed at the time by Egypt,
Russia, and the UAE.
The question of rights to Libya’s vast hydrocarbon
resources has become more urgent this year as global energy prices have soared.
The EU has denounced the 2019 maritime border deal,
while France has said the recent agreement was “not in accordance with
international law”.
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