Lieutenant General Khaled Khalifa Haftar, Chief of General Staff of the Libyan National Army (LNA), has called on the European Union to intensify joint security efforts to help stabilize Libya’s border regions and confront the growing challenges posed by irregular migration and transnational crime.
His remarks were made during a meeting in Benghazi with a senior EU delegation visiting eastern Libya for high-level consultations on regional security cooperation.
The delegation included EU Ambassador to Libya Nicola Orlando, the commander of Operation IRINI, Rear Admiral Marco Casapieri, and Jan Vyčítal, head of the EU Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM).
During the talks, they also discussed the latest political and security developments in Libya and the broader region, with emphasis on enhancing coordinated action to strengthen border security, combat human trafficking networks, and curb organized crime operating across Libya’s vast desert corridors.
Haftar praised the European Union’s continued engagement in supporting stability initiatives and expressed the LNA’s readiness to expand structured cooperation with European institutions.
He underscored that Libya’s border security challenges are not domestic issues alone but affect the wider Mediterranean and European security landscape, particularly as instability in the Sahel continues to drive migration flows northward.
The EU delegation also held separate meetings with Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and LNA Deputy Commander-in-Chief Lieutenant General Saddam Khalifa Haftar earlier in the day. Those talks similarly addressed border control, migration pressures, and the development of operational mechanisms to boost coordination between EU missions and Libyan military authorities.
