Brussels, 06/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 6 June, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini called on the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution allowing the EUNAVFOR Med Sophia naval operation in the Mediterranean to enforce the arms embargo on the high seas off the coast of Libya, in addition to fighting against people trafficking.
“Once again we are asking this Council to adopt a resolution on authorisation of the operation Sophia to enforce the UN arms embargo on the high seas off the coast of Libya”, Mogherini said to the Security Council, at an annual briefing on EU-UN relations.
According to diplomats quoted by French news agency AFP, a draft resolution, developed in particular by France and the UK, has been distributed to the 15 member countries of the Security Council. They are due to start debating this in the coming days.
However, at the round table, the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, seemed quite circumspect. Stating that the number who had died in the Mediterranean since the start of the year was above the number who had died over the same period last year, Churkin wondered whether “it would be wise to extend the mandate” of the operation. “Even if the control of weapons is important”, he said.
At the Foreign Affairs Council on 23 May, the European ministers had agreed to allocate new tasks to the Sophia operation - enforcing the arms embargo on the basis of a new UN Security Council resolution, and also training coastguards and the Navy (see EUROPE 11556). At the UN, Mogherini said she had spoken to Libya's Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj on Friday 3 June about how to train the coastguards. Their training “will be an opportunity to make the Libyans capable of saving lives at sea, of dismantling (…) the people trafficking, of controlling Libyan territorial waters effectively, and of creating a safer environment for Libyan fishermen”, she told the UN Security Council. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)