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Примедбе Високог представника / потпредсједника #ФедерицаМогхерини у складу с #ФореигнАффаирсСветом

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"First of all, we had a good discussion with the ministers [of foreign affairs] on Libya, where we saw unity. I have seen that some Ministers already conveyed to you this message of unity in the work that we are doing and that we want to do even more in the weeks and months to come in support, first of all, for the political process - elections, both presidential and parliamentary elections – to take place as soon as possible, but with the right security and political framework.

"Political framework means a legal framework that makes it clear for what the Libyans are going to vote, with the constitutional framework if possible; support to the UN Secretary General's Special Representative [to Libya, Ghassan] Salamé translates also on the other two sectors of his action together with the political transition, which are the economic reforms and the security arrangements. In particular, we have looked with the ministers at how we can as the European Union, together with member states, increase our support to the consolidation of the ceasefire and the implementation of the security arrangements.

"As you know we have some instruments in place already on the security front, namely Operation Sophia for which all member states have indicated that they want to keep and continue it, in particular when it comes to fighting against smugglers and traffickers and their business model, but also in their training to the Libyan coast guards. We also have EUBAM [EU Border Assistance Mission, in Libya], our mission that is helping the work inside Libya on border management in particular. And we have a liaison [and planning] cell (EULPC) that is working on security conditions and situation.

"Our presence in Libya has been intensified in these weeks in complicated circumstances, but this is something that is going to continue and we put this support at the disposal of the United Nations  - and of the Libyans, obviously. We also indicated full support to the upcoming conference in Palermo that Italy is organising. All member states indicated that they welcome this conference and we will follow up from that one.

"The message that comes out of the foreign ministers' meeting on Libya is a message of unity and of determination to work even more to support a Libyan-found solution to the situation in the country under UN auspices.

"We then had an excellent exchange with the UN agencies that are dealing with migration and refugees. We were glad to welcome the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, and by video-link the new Director-General of the International Organization for Migration, Antonio Vitorino, in this way highlighting the strategic partnership the European Union has with the United Nations on this issue.

"We have reviewed all our current fields of cooperation starting from Libya. You know that we have been working very well with the UN agencies to free migrants and refugees that were in the detention centres inside Libya, arranging for them to be evacuated through Niger, either to go back through voluntary returns or to be protected through mechanisms guaranteed by the UNHCR [United Nations Refugee Agency]. We want to accelerate that process.

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"We also looked at ways in which we can increase our cooperation on other routes apart from the Central Mediterranean one. Let me stress that the Central Mediterranean route has gone down by 80-85% this year, while we have seen an increase by 150% on the Western Mediterranean route, so we decided to increase our work, in particular with Morocco and Mauritania.

"We are already putting in place some new measures in this respect, like funds that will be allocated to cooperate with these countries to manage together the Western Mediterranean route - obviously, keeping a very careful eye on the Eastern Mediterranean route, but also to global trends that we are seeing. Filippo Grandi was just back from a Latin America visit and briefed us also on the situation of Venezuelan citizens moving around the area, with a large number of refugees and migrants coming out of the country.

"And then we co-operate on many other issues and crises, on refugees - in particular Syria but I can also mention Myanmar and the Rohingya crisis and many others.

"So we decided to preserve some of the good results we have already achieved, strengthen our cooperation with the UN and with our partners, namely the African Union and the countries of origins and transit, finance more our EU [Emergency] Trust Fund [for Africa] for projects along the routes. Here I made an appeal to Member States to contribute more to the Trust Fund and also to focus on new ways in which we can address the shifting of migration routes elsewhere from the Central Mediterranean one.

"We then had a point on the Central African Republic - we also adopted Закључци that we already published so you can have a look at that - deciding to increase our work with the country, both in terms of humanitarian and development aid, but also in terms of support to security. We already have a presence there in this respect, a training mission [EUTM RCA], that we want to strengthen.

"Then we had a discussion with the ministers on the situation in Venezuela, where I want to be very clear: We reaffirmed our strong position on the political crisis in Venezuela. You know that we have already introduced targeted sanctions on individuals that are responsible for violation of human rights – namely political rights – in Venezuela. This policy is going to continue. The European Union is not looking at softening its position on Venezuela in any way.

"On the other side, we also believe that there can only be a democratic political solution to the current crisis in the country and this is why we will explore the possibility of establishing a contact group to see if there are the conditions to facilitate not a mediation - there are clearly not the conditions for that -, or a dialogue, but a political process: a way to be in contact with the different parties - obviously not only the government, but also the different sides of the opposition, involving some regional international actors - and as I said, exploring the possibility of creating conditions for a political process to be started.

"I do not want to create expectations here, we have not decided to constitute it yet, but just to explore the possibility of doing so, because we are worried that in the lack - in the absence - of a political process, tensions could only get worse. The situation of the Venezuelan people, among which many hundreds of thousands of European citizens, could become even worse.

"We do not want to just sit and wait for this to happen. We want to try and see if the European Union can play a useful role together with others and try to avoid that the situation grows from bad to worse - or actually from worse to even worse.

Питања и одговори

[EUNAVFOR MED] Operation Sophia is observing and monitoring the oil trafficking and smuggling of Libyan oil revenues. These revenues go back to the militia, making them richer, wealthier, and also create more competition and conflict between these militias. Which actions are the EU's specific services conducting to stop this oil smuggling? Would you envisage specific sanctions against the militia, mainly those who are in Tripoli, who are blocking the peace process - even if the sanction would be taken unilaterally by the EU, although these smuggled oil revenues maybe go to European banks but also other banks in other regions?

 

First of all, part of our work together with the UN Special Representative [for Libya, Ghassan Salamé] and in full support to his work, is to make sure that the oil revenues - the legal ones, the regular ones – are equally and transparently getting where they should get. Meaning, as I said many times, Libya is a rich country in terms of resources and of the money that comes out of these natural resources. The point is how to make the revenues flow transparently and equally shared in a proper manner, so that it benefits the Libyan people. This is a work that we are supporting and that the UN Special Representative [Salamé] is investing a lot of energy in doing.

When it comes to the irregular flows of oil, the smuggling of oil, we are starting to monitor this. As you know, in Operation Sophia, the main mandate, the core mandate is dismantling the traffickers' and the smugglers' networks. We added two elements to the mandate: one related to the training of the coast guards of Libya, the other one is the monitoring and the implementation of the UN mandate to stop the arms flows. On the oil, we are still working.

But we have decided today together with the ministers [of foreign affairs] to look at ways in which the national central banks in the European Union member states can trace the money flows in a better way so that, following the money flows, we can be more effective in determining who is acting on which fronts, be it smuggling of oil, of arms, or of human beings and having this in impact on the different financing of the militia or the political and military fights.

The second part of the question was on sanctions. We have discussed this with [Ghassan] Salamé. I understand that work is still ongoing within the Security Council of the United Nations, so what we discussed today with the Foreign Ministers of the EU Member States is the need for the EU Member States that are currently sitting in the UN Security Council to coordinate positions in this respect and co-ordinate very closely with [Ghassan] Salamé.

We have seen that President [of the United States, Donald] Trump is going to send his Secretary of State [Mike Pompeo] to Saudi Arabia to try and find out what really happened with the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. Can you give an indication of what the EU Foreign Ministers collectively think about this situation? Any message that you have for the Saudi regime? On Brexit: can you give a sense of your feeling? Are you feeling optimistic this week, are you less optimistic?

I think I will leave the second question for later in the week, and as I said this morning, Brexit is not a foreign policy issue for the European Union yet. We have the [UK] Foreign Secretary [Jeremy Hunt] sitting around the table, we cooperate and take decisions together well and from now to the end of March, I will continue to be chairing a Council with 28 member states and I am sitting here in this capacity, so I will not comment on Brexit.

On Saudi Arabia, as I said this morning, coming in the Council, I can confirm this, we have talked about that with the Foreign Ministers of the 28 member states and there was full consensus around the table on the fact that we expect transparency, we expect full clarity from investigations to be done by the Saudi authorities together and in full cooperation with the Turkish authorities. We support very much the messages that come along the same lines from other partners, starting from Washington. I expressed myself the first time on exactly the same day when Secretary [of State of the United States, Mike] Pompeo said exactly the same words we said. I think we are completely on the same page with our American friends on this: we expect transparency and we wait for having more clarity on what happened in this case that is a particularly dramatic one.

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