Qelle: Mail Onine

Unable to halt Europe-bound migrants, Tripoli demands help

By Ulf Laessing

TRIPOLI, May 24 (Reuters) – Europe cannot halt the deadly traffic of African migrants across the Mediterranean unless it ends a boycott of forces that have seized power in the Libyan capital and helps authorities there cope, the de facto government in Tripoli said. Chaos and civil war since NATO warplanes helped topple dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 have turned the North African country into the launching point for human traffickers smuggling tens of thousands of people across the Mediterranean. Libya’s rulers have rounded up thousands of Europe-bound African migrants in makeshift detention centres. But officials say they have no room to hold the migrants, no way of fighting smugglers and no hope of guarding vast desert frontiers to prevent thousands more people trying to reach the sea. „We tell you: come and talk and cooperate with us, the national salvation government,“ Mohamed al-Ghirani, foreign minister in the government based in the capital Tripoli, told Reuters in his office overlooking the Mediterranean. „If Europe doesn’t cooperate, then after (some) years Europe will be completely black. Europe will change from a white Europe to an African Europe,“ he said.

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