Frattini reports to the Chamber: the situation in Libya is most serious, a potential bloodbath. Europe must stand united in addressing the migration emergency
ROME, Italy, February 23, 2011/African Press Organization (APO)/ — Frattini reports to the Chamber.
“We are in a grave, a most grave, situation whose tragic outcome will be a bloodbath”. Speaking was Minister Franco Frattini in his report to the Chamber of Deputies (he will address the Senate this afternoon, 23 February 2011). The Minister was illustrating the Government’s position on the events unfolding in Libya.
In Frattini’s view the situation “is made all the more serious by the proposals expressed yesterday by Gadaffi. His determination to attack his own people is causing a state of civil war between areas and provinces where groups are fighting with gangs and death squads. This analysis”, added the Minister, “is one that I have shared with many other governments, European and otherwise”.
Frattini also expressed concern over the radical Islamism in Cyrenaica, where “the birth of an Islamic emirate in eastern Libya” has been announced.
Italy will stand united with Europe in evaluating appropriate further measures against Tripoli, reported Frattini. As regards the migration emergency caused by the crisis in North Africa, “it is clear that Italy cannot bear the consequences alone”. The absence of a single European response to the immigration emergency “would mean the collapse, the destruction of European solidarity, the end of the European policies we have known for the last 50 years”.
Minister Frattini pointed out that Italy’s request for the EU to manage the potential exodus from Libya “is not a request to distribute immigrants throughout Europe, but for a reliable mechanism to share the economic, social and indeed human costs of the inflow of migrants that one or more member states, especially those bordering the Mediterranean, could experience”.
SOURCE
Italy – Ministry of Foreign Affairs
