France will next week reopen its embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli, President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday, in a sign of a gradual return of stability to the country after years of conflict.
“From Monday our embassy in Tripoli will reopen and our ambassador can return to your territory,” he told the visiting chairman of Libya’s Presidential Council, Mohammad Menfi and his vice-president Moussa Al-Koni in Paris.
The French embassy in Libya’s capital city was the target of a car bomb explosion in April 2013 and had been officially closed since July 2014.
Libya’s new transitional executive emerged from a United Nations peace process that was launched in November in Tunis, then voted on in Geneva and confirmed by Libya’s parliament on March 10.
Oil-rich Libya has been torn by civil war since a NATO-backed uprising led to the assassination of the revolutionary leader Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi in 2011.
“I want here to show you all my support and that of France for the new Libyan unified authorities that emerged from the transition process,” said Macron.
“We have a debt towards Libya and the Libyans for a decade of disorder,” said Macron, adding that regional stability would be impossible without peace in Libya.
France and Macron have been bitterly critical of Turkey’s military intervention in Libya while rejecting claims that Paris had secretly meddled in the country’s politics.
