Heated Confrontation Between Abdelkader Messahel, Sameh Shoukry

Meeting of the neighboring Libyan countries, which is hosted by Algiers today, to search for solutions to the Libyan crisis, is threatened by the Egyptian air force raids against some sites in the Libyan territory following the terrorist attack on the church of Menia in southern Egypt.

The two-day meeting is attended by the Foreign Minister, Abdelkader Messahel, and his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry and Tunisian Khmaess Jhinaoui, which comes after Algeria’s resentment of Egyptian air strikes against Libyan political parties.

This station is an opportunity for the Algerian side to try to understand the background of what the Egyptian authorities have done, and to warn of its repercussions, not only on the Libyan side, but also on the regions of North Africa, the Sahel and the Sahara, because the results of the external intervention are usually disastrous, and is one of the direct consequences of the NATO intervention in the eastern neighbor of Algeria.

According to the Egyptian authorities, what was done by the warplanes was targeting locations to train those who are described as terrorists. 

According to the spokesman of the Egyptian army, Col. Tamer al-Rifai, Algeria sees what Cairo has done as an attempt to get one of the parties to the conflict to the other, and this does not contribute to the resolution of the crisis, but rather complicates it, as quoted by Algerian diplomatic sources.

These strikes left great embarrassment to the Algerian authorities, which have distinguished relationships with the various actors in the Libyan crisis, and it also received letters of distress from Libyan parties that are affected by the Egyptian military operation, headed by the national reconciliation government, that is led by Fayez el-Sarraj, who is recognized internationally, calling on it to intervene to stop the Egyptian raids.

Observers believe that what the Egyptian Air Force is doing in Libya aimed at supporting the retired General Khalifa Haftar, and in turn weakening his political and military opponents, which is an approach that is referred to by Reuters, which reported an analysis that it believed that the Egyptian air strikes inside the Libyan territory were Planned in advance, while the incident of the attack on the Egyptian Church, was only a justification for covering up the real objective of the military operation.

Egyptian side tried to remove the charge of stoking the Libyan crisis because of its air force strikes, and confirmed the importance of Algiers meeting, through the statement of the member of the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Representatives, Anissa Hassouna, which asserted that “restoring stability of Libya is a common interest of the three countries, and tried to justify the position of her country by emphasizing the protection of the border from the infiltration of extremist elements, and the tightening of their positions in the Libyan territory.

Messahel is likely to address his Egyptian counterpart at this meeting, as he feels the seriousness of Egyptian army’s raids on the future of the political dialogue that is supported by the countries of the region, the United Nations and the European Union.