On Wednesday, Greece’s Foreign Minister, Nikos Dendias held a telephone conversation with his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry.
In a tweet, Dendias said, “Our discussion focused on security and stability in the SE Mediterranean, including yesterday’s decree issued by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi.”
The Egyptian President issued a decree demarcating the country’s western maritime border with Libya. The decision, fully ignoring the illegal Turkish-Libyan agreement, was published in the Government Gazette.
According to the decree, Egypt’s territorial waters start at a terrestrial point on the Egypt-Libya borders, Point 1, and for a distance of 12 nautical miles, reaching up to Point 8 in the north. The specific territorial line moves to, and stops south from the middle line between Crete and Egypt.
In October, Turkey and the Tripoli-based government, headed by Abdel-Hamid Dbaiba, signed a series of economic agreements that included energy exploration in maritime areas.
The agreements will allow for oil and gas exploration in Libyan waters, and come three years after the two countries signed a maritime border deal, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said after signing the MoU in Tripoli.
Egypt and Greece strongly condemned the deals, which are in disputed waters between Turkey and Libya.
“Turkey seeks once again to take advantage of the turbulent situation in Libya in order to further destabilize the Mediterranean region, and establish regional hegemony,” Dendias said during his talks in Cairo with Shoukry.
The Greek FM stressed that the new Turkish-Libya memorandum “is in complete contradiction with the 2020 roadmap for the resolution of the Libyan conflict.” According to the roadmap, the “foreign policy of the Libyan state should be conducted in a manner that observes friendly and peaceful relations with regional and international partners, and in accordance with the rules of good neighbourliness and mutual interests.”
Greece notified the UN Secretary-General that Dbaiba’s government has “no right to proceed with any agreement that binds subsequent, democratically elected governments.”
He also stressed that the MoU has been opposed by international actors and states in the region and beyond, and high-ranking officials within Libyan institutions.