France-Libya - The extraordinary summit of the European Union (EU) on Libya ended on Friday in Brussels without recognising the group of insurgents holed up in Benghazi as the sole representative of the Libyan people, considering it merely as 'a political interlocutor'. France remains the only EU country to have recognised the insurgents as legitimate representatives of the Libyan people. Speaking after the summit, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that his country would demand the holding of a tripartite summit on the Libyan crisis which would bring together the EU, the Arab League and the African Union (AU).

The summit would discuss the creation of humanitarian zones to shelter the 200,000 persons displaced in Egypt and Tunisia.

A joint meeting of Interior Ministers of the EU and North African countries will also be organised to define actions to control migration resulting from the political unrest in southern Mediterranean countries.

According to President Sarkozy, France does not recommend the launch of targeted air strikes on Libya because of the complexity of such an operation 'on a desert territory three times larger than France'.

He expressed reservations about a possible military ground intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Libya which, he said, should be based on a resolution of the UN Security Council considered as “the only legal basis' that can justify such an operation.

The summit ended by welcoming the decision of the King of Morocco to establish a constitutional monarchy in his country.

Pana 13/03/2011