Saudi Arabia asks Libya's ambassador to leave the kingdom

The Libyan official mass media said that Saudi Arabia asked the Libyan ambassador in Riyadh to leave the country.

The Libyan TV and official news agency said the Saudi authorities asked the ambassador to leave the country on Wednesday, adding that the ambassador will return back to Libya shortly.

The Libyan news agency quoted sources at the foreign ministry as saying that it did not ask its ambassador to leave his workplace in Riyadh "but since the host country asked him, he will be returning back to Libya." The sources did not say whether ambassador Muhammad Saeed al-Qasshat will leave Riyadh alone or whether the embassy will continue to work normally.

Diplomatic tension escalated between the two countries since Saudi Arabia had summoned on its ambassador from Tripoli in December 2004 because of what it described the conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi crown prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz.

Tripoli denies these accusations. The Libyan leader Muammar al-Qathafi in an interview with al-Jazeera TV last week blamed any tension between the two countries to "baseless" American media reports.