At a mini Arab summit in Tripoli yesterday (June 10), the informal leader of Libya threw sarcastic remarks at French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been forced to water down his initial plan in order to make it acceptable by the EU.
"The EU is taking care of its unity and the initiative of our dear friend Sarkozy was firmly rejected by Europe. The Arab league similarly will not accept its unity to be destroyed," Gaddafi stated.
"If Europe wants to co-operate with us, they can do it with the Arab League or the African Union, and we will never allow Arab or African unity to be undermined," he went on. Then he said the 'Union for the Mediterranean' was doomed to failure, like the 'Barcelona Process' or the neighbourhood policy that the EU maintains with countries south of the Mediterranean, but in which Libya has never been fully involved.
Gaddafi had already made it clear that he will not be present at the launch ceremony in Paris on 13 July.
The mini summit brought together the presidents of Algeria, Syria, Tunisia and Mauritania as well as the prime minister of Morocco.
No decision is expected to be formally adopted, but the countries needed to sort out their differences over the presence of Israel – which would also be a member of Sarkozy's proposed Union - at the Paris summit. The Algerian daily Le Quotidien d'Oran wrote that only two countries were supporters of the 'Union of the Mediterranean' – Egypt, which has been offered the co-presidency with France, and Tunisia, which has been promised it could host the initiative's Secretariat.
