Libya pushes maritime border talks with Malta and Greece
Libya has moved to accelerate maritime border demarcation with Malta and Greece, turning a technical legal file into a dispute over sovereignty, regional stability and strategic control in the central Mediterranean, as reported by The Libya Observer and agencies on March 30th.
Tripoli is not treating the issue as a narrow bureaucratic exercise, but as part of a wider effort to secure Libya’s rights in contested waters and strengthen its position along one of the Mediterranean’s most sensitive geopolitical frontiers.
Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah made took the decision during a meeting in Tripoli with Acting Foreign Minister Taher Al-Baour, border demarcation committee head Mohamed Al-Harari and Minister of State for African Affairs Fathallah Al-Zeni. He was briefed on the committee’s work over the previous six months and on the state of discussions with both Malta and Greece.
The emphasis from the Libyan side was clear, preserve sovereign rights in territorial waters, remain within the framework of international law, and speed up the technical and legal work needed to bring the process to a conclusion.
Greece’s foreign ministry has already announced that Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis will visit Tripoli on April 1st after a stop in Benghazi, underlining that Athens now sees this file as active and politically important.
The push also follows Greece’s invitation last July for formal talks on exclusive economic zones, a sign that both sides are trying to manage a relationship shaped for years by overlapping maritime claims and wider regional tension.
Libya is trying to convert a long running and politically charged maritime question into a more structured negotiation that protects its legal position while reducing room for external pressure or unilateral interpretation. In that sense, the demarcation file is becoming part of a broader Libyan effort to define how the country projects sovereignty at sea, not only on land.
The Libya Observer plus agencies, maghrebi.org
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