Gerapetritis speaks with Cyprus’s Kombos and Egypt’s Abdelatty after the Libyan vote on the Turkish–Libyan memorandum

Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis held phone calls on Tuesday, October 20 with his counterparts from Cyprus, Constantinos Kombos, and Egypt, Badr Abdelatty, with the Libyan House of Representatives’ approval of the Turkish–Libyan memorandum as the main topic. The contacts were announced by the Greek Foreign Ministry on X, hours after Athens described the memorandum as “spurious, null and void” and said it had informed partners and allies.

On the conversation with Kombos, the ministry said that the focus was on “developments on the Turkish–Libyan memorandum and the risks to security and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean”. The Cypriot minister had written earlier that the call took place “within the framework of our ongoing coordination” and that they discussed “current developments in the region”. Nicosia issued its own statement the same afternoon condemning the decision of the Libyan parliament.

In its statement, the Greek ministry had stressed that “geography and the international Law of the Sea are not changed by unilateral, legally unfounded parliamentary decisions” and that Turkey and Libya “do not have opposite or adjacent coasts”. It also recalled Greece’s delimitation agreements with Egypt and Italy and called on the Libyan side “to refrain from any action that runs counter to international law”. The contacts with Nicosia and Cairo are Athens’ first public move since that statement, which said Greece “will take every appropriate action” to protect its sovereign rights.

Abdelatty: strategic partnership and the trilateral with Cyprus

On the second call, the ministry wrote that the discussion “focused on developments around the Turkey–Libya memorandum and their implications for security and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean”. Abdelatty, in his own post, said he praised the “strategic partnership” with Greece and that the two ministers discussed the trilateral summit with Cyprus and the situation in Libya.

Egypt is the country with which Greece signed a partial EEZ delimitation agreement in 2020, which Athens presents as the lawful answer to the Turkish–Libyan memorandum. Five days earlier, Athens and Cairo had held the third round of political consultations on Libya. The ratification in Benghazi came after the removal of Aguila Saleh as speaker of the House, and both rival centres of power in Libya now back the memorandum, which cuts across the sea area south of Crete.