France and Turkey fracture Nato on Libya

Nato is to investigate French allegations that a Turkish warship targeted a French one in a confrontation over the Libya conflict, which has divided allies.

“The incident in the Mediterranean [Sea] was addressed in the meeting by several [defence ministers]”, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said after video-talks on Thursday (19 June).

“We have made sure that Nato military authorities are investigating the incident to bring full clarity into what happened,” he added.

Turkish warships locked their weapons systems on to a French frigate called the Courbet, which was part of a Nato monitoring mission called Sea Guardian, on 10 June, according to France.

And they did it in order to slip through yet another illegal shipment of arms to Turkey’s ally in the Libya war, the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), France added.

“Turkey’s support for the government of national accord’s offensive goes directly against the efforts to secure a ceasefire, which we support,” the French foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

“This support is aggravated by the hostile and unacceptable actions of Turkish naval forces toward Nato allies, which is aimed at undermining efforts taking place to uphold the UN arms embargo,” France added.

“This conduct, like all foreign interference in the Libyan conflict, must cease,” it said.

And France had the support of eight other Nato countries against Turkey, the French defence minister, Florence Parly, told parliament on Thursday.

The 10 June naval incident is just the latest in a long line of irritants between Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Western friends.

Others include: Erdogan’s war on Kurdish people in Syria, his illegal gas-drilling in Cypriot waters, his Greek air-space violations, and his use of migrants to destabilise EU borders.

But France’s complaint on “foreign interference” in Libya must have looked like crocodile tears in the Nato talks.

Turkey might be violating a UN arms embargo, but at least it was fighting on the side of the EU and UN-recognised GNA.

Meanwhile, French special forces have been fighting alongside a warlord from eastern Libya, Khalifa Haftar, in a hybrid alliance involving also Russian mercenaries and African militias.

And if Turkey is to face an inquiry about the 10 June incident, then France’s ally, Haftar, also face questions after GNA forces recently discovered mass graves in ex-Haftar zones, which they liberated with Turkish support.

French diplomats declined to speak to EUobserver about the mass-grave revelations.

But the French foreign ministry, earlier this week, told French media in Paris: “The discovery of mass graves in Tarhouna [a Libyan town] is deeply shocking”.

“A thorough investigation must be conducted into this very serious matter and those responsible must be brought to justice”, it added.

It remains to be seen how or if any Tarhouna enquiry goes ahead, alongside Nato’s probe into the 10 June events.

For his part, Stoltenberg did not mention the alleged war crimes on Thursday, but he noted that: “Nato, of course, supports the implementation of UN decisions, including UN arms embargoes”.

“We not only support the implementation of UN decisions, but we also support the efforts of the UN to find a peaceful, negotiated solution to the conflict,” he said.

The rival Libyan authorities, and their cast of foreign backers, have been waging war for the past six years, in what is coming to replace Syria and Ukraine as the ugliest crisis in the EU neighbourhood.

But prospects of a “peaceful, negotiated solution” seemed dimmer than ever, with Italy, this week, also announcing that it was embedding military experts, to help clear mines, with the GNA-Turkey forces, multiplying the number of Western divisions on the crisis and of foreign troops on the battlefield.

Andrew Rettman

Source:euobserver.com