Euro-Mediterranean parliamentary forum calls for Libyan participation

The constituent session of the Euro-Mediterranean parliamentary forum held in Brussels on October 27 - 28 adopted a final declaration recommending the participation of Libya and Mauritania in the Mediterranean process launched in Barcelona.

The session, attended by MPs from the 27 Euro-Mediterranean partner countries, recommended that Libya participate in the whole Barcelona process and that Mauritania participate as a full-fledged member in the political dialogue of the Barcelona process.

For the first time since the launch of the Mediterranean process in 1995, a Libyan delegate attended the Euro-Mediterranean parliamentary forum. The delegate, Libya's ambassador to Brussels, said his country's participation in a Euro-Mediterranean constitutes a straightening up of a mistake against geography, as Libya has more than one thousand kilometers of Mediterranean coasts, and against political common sense.

The Libyan diplomat asserted his country's desire to normalize its relations with Europe.

The participants in the forum debated the challenges that must be taken by the parties involved in the Mediterranean process to materialize the principles of the Barcelona declaration.

The delegates from countries on the southern bank of the Mediterranean have stressed the difficulties encountered in promoting a sound economy and gathering the conditions required for setting up a large free trade area between the two banks of the Mediterranean.

Speaker of the Moroccan House of Representatives (lower house), Abdelouahed Radi who co-chaired the constituent session of the forum along with the speaker of the European Parliament, told reporters when he flew back home that the session debated the role the forum can play in upgrading cooperation between Mediterranean and European countries as well as ways of promoting joint action.

A second meeting will be held in October 1999 to draft the statutes of the forum, whose creation was decided in Strasbourg in March 1997.

Speaker of the Moroccan chamber of Advisors (upper house), Jalal Essaid, also attended the Brussels meeting.